Ark of fetishism

I don't understand why the existence of physical artifacts with some vague connection to religious myths and legends substantiates these stories' woo-woo claims. Anthropologists have a name for this belief: Fetishism.

For example, Muslims pray five times a day to a probable meteorite housed in a temple in the Saudi Arabian city of Mecca. The existence of this rock doesn't mean that it supports the validity of Islam.

Similarly, the existence of the ruins of the Temple of Delphi doesn't mean that the Greek god Apollo exists and at one time sent cryptic messages to female mediums there, even though famous historical people in antiquity like the philosopher Socrates consulted these "oracles" for advice.

Yet today we see stupid shows on cable TV, like the SyFy Channel's Legend Quest, based on the premise of finding alleged artifacts connected with biblical stories, like Moses' staff, the Ark of the Covenant, the Holy Lance and the Holy Grail, with the implication that these artifacts might have woo-woo powers which challenge the current naturalistic world view of educated people. Assuming for the sake of argument that pieces of stuff like these things exist in the here-and-now, and that you could handle them, so what? Muslims who go on their pilgrimages to Mecca can press their lips to their cult's magic rock, but Westerners generally consider that an exercise in fetishism, and not a point in favor of Islam's truth claims.

I could say the same thing about the idea of building fetishes based on descriptions of them in ancient religious texts. Creationist Ken Ham, for example, who according to what I've read sounds like a crank of the highest order, wants to build a full-scale replica of Noah's Ark at his creationism theme-park in Kentucky based on the description and measurements found in the book of Genesis. Ham reasons thusly:

To rebuild the Ark, to full-scale biblical dimensions, as a sign to the world that God’s Word is true and its message of salvation must be heeded (Romans 3:4, 5:12).

Just as the Ark in Noah’s day was a sign of salvation, as well as judgment, an Ark rebuilt today can be a sign to point to Jesus Christ, the Ark of our salvation, and to coming judgment (II Peter 3:5-13, John 10:9).

I don't see how these claims follow from their premises. The ability to build things based on descriptions in stories doesn't mean that these things must have existed for real at one time, much less acquire mystical powers in the process. Peter Jackson's set builders and prop makers built things for Jackson's LOTR movies based on Tolkien's descriptions of them in his novels, including the One Ring; but no rational individual believes that Tolkien's novels portray historical events, and nobody believes that the prop Ring used in the movie gives its wearer supernatural powers in real life.

I get the impression that christians' anxiety about their doomsday cult's future drives both creationism and end times beliefs, especially because many christians combine both interpretations of their scriptures. These christians know that their world view doesn't make sense in light of modern scientific knowledge, especially given the vistas of space and time science has revealed to us; so they want to center the universe around humanity and compress its time scale down to something which makes humans seem cosmically important. It seems more likely to me that if humanity survives, christianity will disappear eventually without an apocalypse to signal its ending.