A FLOOD of protests has rained down on a new US theme park that boasts an enormous replica of Noah’s Ark.

Built by creationists who believe the world was created by God 6000 years ago, the seven-storey vessel houses models of dinosaurs as well as other animals.

Controversially, only Christians are employed at the park, which is expected to attract 1.4 million visitors each year.

Leading scientists have already spoken of their worry that the theme park will be used to brainwash visitors into rejecting evolution. There has also been criticism of the tax breaks given to the park’s founders, a group of fundamentalist Christians called Answers in Genesis.

Tax breaks worth £14m plus junk bonds and £25m of private donations have helped fund the first phase of construction, which cost £77m.

Total costs are expected to reach more than £116m, with later phases to include a replica of the Tower of Babel.

Along with the ark, the 8000-acre site in Kentucky includes the Ararat Ridge Zoo complete with kangaroos, Tibetan yaks and ostriches, a petting zoo offering donkey and camel rides and a nine-mile-long zipwire course set to transport visitors at speeds of up to 50miles an hour.

HOW BIG IS IT?

BELIEVED to be the world’s largest timber-framed building, the Ark Encounter is 510ft long.

Its measurements are based on those given in Genesis, the first book in the Bible, where it says that God told Noah to build an ark measuring 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide and 30 cubits high, with a cubit roughly measuring the distance from a man’s fingers to his elbow. “Noah’s cubits” are just some of the Bible-themed offerings for sale in the gift shop.

The presence of a gift shop is just one respect in which the modern-day ark differs from the Biblical one – another is the fact the base is made of concrete so would be no use in any flood, although it would displace up to 20,000 tons of water as it sank like a stone.

Answers in Genesis maintain that Noah took between 55 and 75 years to build his ark, but the modern version was assembled in less than two years despite legal action sparked by the park’s Christian-only policy for the workforce.

The state of Kentucky tried to rescind the £14m tax break it had awarded to the park after Answers in Genesis revealed they would only hire Christian staff – but the group sued the state and won back the break, which allows them to claw back taxes made on cash spent by visitors.

Last month it was also revealed that new members of staff have to sign a contract disavowing premarital sex and same-sex marriage.

“If you’re a religious organisation, you can have a religious preference in hiring," said Ken Ham, president and co-founder of Answers in Genesis.

"It makes sense. I can’t think of Planned Parenthood employing someone like me.”

WHY THE DINOS?

THE group believes that although Noah took the animals into the ark two by two, as the Bible says, they were not the modern species found today but ancestors of these animals. To illustrate this belief there are model animals on board the modern ark that purport to look like these ancestors of cats, dogs and other creatures – such as a rhino without a horn and a feline the size of a domestic cat but with a head that looks like a lion. And as the group also believes that dinosaurs roamed the planet at the same time as humans, there are also lots of dinosaurs.

The animals are stored on three levels while the top houses Noah's family’s rather luxurious-looking living quarters, complete with soft lighting and crimson curtains.

Much to the despair of scientists who point out that dinosaurs died out about 65 million years before man appeared, Ham says the ark is going to be “one of the greatest Christian outreaches of this era in history”.

Worryingly, he may already be preaching to the converted – in a recent poll nearly half of Americans said they were creationists and rejected the science of evolution.

WHAT ABOUT EVOLUTION?

PROTESTORS are angry that the park was granted state tax incentives when it is so blatantly going against standard science education.

“Basically, this boat is a church raising scientifically illiterate children and lying to them about science,’’ said Jim Helton, leader of atheist group the Tri-State Freethinkers.

Located in Williamston, south of Cincinnati, the park is within one day’s drive of two-thirds of the US population and near the Creation Museum, opened by the same group almost a decade ago.

The new park can take up to 10,000 visitors every day, and high demand in the first few weeks means it will have extended opening hours for the first 40 days – the amount of time it was said to have rained during the Biblical flood.

Not all creationists share the group’s beliefs, which are sometimes referred to as “young Earth creationism”. This states that the Earth is around 6000 years old and that the six-day creation and flood accounts found in the first ten chapters of Genesis are the literal, historical truth. They believe evolution is wrong and is leading to the moral downfall of society and “evils” like atheism, same-sex marriage and abortion.

“We’re becoming more like the days of Noah in that we see increasing secularisation in the culture,” Ham said.

“The reason we are building the ark is not as an entertainment centre. I mean it’s not like a Disney or Universal, just for anyone to go and have fun. It’s a religious purpose. It’s because we’re Christians and we want to get the Christian message out.”

Protestors have been picketing the park since it opened last Thursday.

They share the view of Dr James Krupa, of the University of Kentucky.

“That Ken Ham is trying to ignore vast evidence to the contrary and convince people the world is 6,000 years old is an embarrassment to Kentucky, the US, and to Christianity,” he said.