This book presents the evidence for young earth creationism in the form of 19 answers to questions commonly asked by evolutionists or skeptics. This includes:
How accurate is carbon dating?
How can we see stars in a young universe?
Who was Cain’s wife?
Was Noah’s Flood global? (also: Where did the water come from? How was continental drift involved?)
How does the Ice Age fit into a creationist model?
How did animals get to Austrailia?
What happened to the dinosaurs?
Most of the authors are scientists and they present alternate evidence to show that creationism is scientifically plausible. Their model of Noah’s Flood is very interesting. It begins with plate tectonic shifts that break up Pangea; it shows how a global flood and continuous rain could sustain itself for 40 days, how the flood waters and oceans could recede to their present positions, and how this would result in an Ice Age with land bridges between Asia and Australia and North America. These models make a lot of sense of the geologic and fossil information we see in the world today.
The book also presents many pictures of famous geologic formations commonly accepted as millions of years old, and they point out features and characteristics that are more consistent with flood deposits than slow, gradual evolution:
• Folds in the rock
• Flat, seamless, sorted layers with no sign of millions of years of erosion
• Polystrate fossils and other “pipes” of rock that cross geologic stratum that supposedly represent millions of years
• Marine fossils at the top of Mount Everest; etc.
Their model of a young solar system that attempts to explain how we see light from stars millions of light years away was also interesting but much less convincing. Even the authors admitted it is a work in progress.
There is also a very illuminating chapter on genetics that addresses why it was safe for Cain to marry his sister.
This book was useful for me. I was reading Bill Nye’s book Undeniable at the same time, which presents the pro-evolution view. I would turn to this book to see the flip side of the argument. Most of the time this book included more hard science and more compelling arguments.
I thought Creation Answers book was less effective in the chapters that dealt with pure theological questions, such as “Does the Book of Genesis teach there were gaps between the seven days” or “Were the Sons of God in Genesis 6:4 really extraterrestrials?” I preferred to stick with the science debates.