The New Answers Book

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 384 pages
• Published by: Master Book; imprint January 15, 2007
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0890515093
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0890515099
• Book Dimensions: 9 x 5.9 x 1.2 inches
• Weighs: 12 ounces

Product Description
In today s world, Christians find challenges to their faith every day. How are we supposed to answer the toughest questions posed by the world? This new resource from Answers in Genesis gives answers for some of the most difficult questions that modern Christians face, such as: Is there really a God? Did God really take six days to create everything? What about evolution? Does archaeology support the Bible? What about ETs and UFOs? Was there really an ice age? Where did the races come from? An essential resource for any believer, The New Answers Book provides a ready defense against the attacks of evolutionary thought. An impressive list of reputable creation scientists join author Ken Ham to answer these 25 questions scientifically, biblically, and logically. Contributors include: Paul Taylor, Mike Oard, Mike Riddle, Dr. Andy McIntosh, Dr. Bryant Wood, Dr. Tommy Mitchell, Dr. Georgia Purdom, Dr. Jason Lisle, Dr. Monty White, Dr. Terry Mortenson, Bodie Hodge, Dr. David Menton, Dr. Andrew Snelling, Dr. Clifford Wilson. Christians of all ages face challenges to their faith from those who emphasize evolution and millions of years thinking. This revolutionary resource will provide you with a ready answer.

About The Author
Australian Ken Ham is one of the most in-demand Christian conference speakers in the United States. He is the executive director of Answers in Genesis, a creationist organization based in Kentucky, which emphasizes the relevance of the Book of Genesis to the life of the average person. He has authored numerous books including The Lie: Evolution, The Great Dinosaur Mystery Solved, Dinosaurs of Eden, and co-authored One Blood: the Biblical Answer to Racism and The Answers Book.

Reader Reviews
The New Answers Book channels Jacques Derrida (French philosopher, founder of deconstructionism) and literal biblical inerrancy: everyone's view of reality is invariably shaped and determined by their initial assumptions. Truth is an illusion and no one can ever really know anything - unless it ended up in that mishmash of myths, superstitions, and unverifiable special revelations known as the bible. Ken Ham et al present ludicrous conceits in ways that seem, if not actually true, then at least not quite so patently false - truthiness theology or alternate reality apologetics - also known as intentional ignorance 101. Stock-in-tirade for Answers in Genesis (AiG), the creation-cult ministry behind this silly and delusional diatribe. Let's start with dinosaurs... Chapter 12 (Ham) asserts that humans and dinosaurs lived alongside one another and are mentioned in the bible - "The Flintstones" as documentary. From an evolutionary perspective they are. Isaiah mentions various feathered Theropod dinosaur descendents - such as eagles, sparrows, owls, ravens, and doves - that we know and enjoy today as birds. The Book of Job is offered as proof that Sauropod dinosaurs are also depicted. Job describes a large animal known as "Behemoth" which literally means "beast" or "dumb beast." Here is the key passage: "Lo now, his strength is in his loins, and his force is in the navel of his belly. He moveth his tail like a cedar: the sinews of his stones are wrapped together. His bones are as strong pieces of brass; his bones are like bars of iron (Job 40:16-17 KJV)." Here's a more accurate translation of the relevant text by Stephen Mitchell, who published a definitive translation of The Book of Job (available on amazon.com): "Look: the power in his thighs, the pulsing sinews of his belly. His p**** stiffens like a pine; his t******** bulge with vigor." The KJV translation utilizes euphemism to avoid stating the obvious - this passage describes a large male mammal during rutting season. Ken Ham mistakes sexual antics for Sauropod dinosaurs! Next time check the supposedly inerrant autographs, if you can find them. Another dinosaurian deception is the claim that red blood cells were found in a late Cretaceous T. rex (in Orwellian Ham-speak a 'missionary lizard') fossil some seventy million years old. Ham immediately declares victory over the non-existent yet necessary - for fund raising purposes anyway - evil secular humanist and Darwinist conspiracy and declares his cretinous creationist timeline of some 6,000 years triumphant. Next time Ken read the primary literature - Schweitzer, Mary H., Mark Marshall, Keith Carron, D. Scott Bohle, Scott C. Busse, Ernst V. Arnold, Darlene Barnard, J. R. Horner, and Jean R. Starkey, 1997a. Heme compounds in dinosaur trabecular bone. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA 94: 6291-6296 - before putting pen to paper. All the data supported the conclusion that the T. rex fossil in question contained fragments of hemoglobin molecules. "The most likely source of these proteins is the once-living cells of the dinosaur." No red blood cells, only protein fragments. Here is the abstract on the PNAS paper authored by Schweitzer et al: "Six independent lines of evidence point to the existence of heme-containing compounds and/or hemoglobin breakdown products in extracts of trabecular tissues of the large theropod dinosaur Tyrannosaurus rex. These include signatures from nuclear magnetic resonance and electron spin resonance that indicate the presence of a paramagnetic compound consistent with heme. In addition, UV/visible spectroscopy and high performance liquid chromatography data are consistent with the Soret absorbance characteristic of this molecule. Resonance Raman profiles are also consistent with a modified heme structure. Finally when dinosaurian tissues were extracted for protein fragments and were used to immunize rats, the resulting antisera reacted positively with purified avian and mammalian hemoglobins. The most parsimonious explanation of this evidence is the presence of blood-derived hemoglobin compounds preserved in the dinosaurian tissues." The lead author of the PNAS paper, Mary Schweitzer, happens to be an evangelical Christian who notes that "If God is who He says He is, He doesn't need us to twist and contort scientific data. The thing that's most important to God is our faith. Therefore he's not going to allow Himself to be proven by scientific methodologies." Creationists routinely accuse Schweitzer of collaboration, conspiracy, or worse: "It rips my guts out," she says. "These people are claiming to represent the Christ that I love. They're not doing a very good job. It's no wonder that a lot of my colleagues are atheists." She told one zealot, "You know, if the only picture of Christ I had was your attitude towards me, I'd run." Molecular paleontology - an exciting new branch of science - has been opened up by Schweitzer's insights and research; proof that workers of any religious tradition, or none at all, can be good scientists since science is based on methodological naturalism - not the medieval demon-haunted supernatural religious conceits Ham learned on his daddy's lap. Chapter 13 (Hodge) explains away the inconvenient fact that human and dinosaur fossils are never found together in the same geologic context. After a futile attempt to determine the pre-deluge human population (from a few hundred thousand to 17 billion people!), Hodge regurgitates the tired trinity of hydrodynamic sorting, ecological zonation and differential escape - all of which utterly fail to explain the fossil record. Any 'new answers' Hodge provides should at least address the following old questions: Why didn't any dinosaurs make it to high ground along with modern mammals (many species were quick and agile enough to do so)? Why don't flowering plants appear in Precambrian strata when stromatilites appear in Cretaceous deposits with flowering plants? Why are some groups of organisms, such as mollusks, found in many geologic strata? How were organisms (such as brachiopods), which are very similar hydrodynamically (nearly the same size, shape, and weight), still perfectly sorted? Why don't pterosaurs (flying reptiles) appear alongside bats and modern birds? How were coral reefs hundreds of feet thick and miles long preserved intact with other fossils below them? How were fossil artifacts of living animals such as footprints and burrows also sorted? Why are no human contrivances found except in the very uppermost strata? Any civilization capable of shipbuilding should have left behind tools or buildings intermingled with trilobite or dinosaur fossils! But then the entire ghastly Noachian global genocide is, thankfully, a myth. How about the age of the earth... Chapter 9 (Riddle) attempts to cast doubt on the incontrovertible scientific consensus that the Earth is approximately 4.54 billion years old. The most direct means of calculating the Earth's age is a Pb/Pb isochron age, derived from samples of the Earth and meteorites. This technique measures three isotopes of lead (Pb-206, Pb-207, and either Pb-208 or PB-204). A plot is then constructed of the resulting PB-206/PB-204 versus Pb-207/Pb-204 ratios. If the solar system formed from a common pool of matter, which was uniformly distributed in terms of Pb isotope ratios, then the initial plots for all objects from that pool of matter would fall on a single point. Over time, the amounts of Pb-206 and Pb-207 will change in samples after they form since these isotopes are decay end-products of uranium (U-238 decays to Pb-206 and U-235 decays to Pb-207). This causes the data points to separate from each other. The higher the uranium-to-lead ratio of a terrestrial rock or meteorite, the more the Pb-206/Pb-204 and Pb-207/Pb-204 values will change with time. If the source of the solar system was also uniformly distributed with respect to uranium isotope ratios, then the data points will always fall on a single line. From the slope of the line we can compute the amount of time (age) which has passed since the pool of matter became separated into discrete objects. A "Young Earth Creationist" (YEC), such as Riddle, would object to the assumptions noted above. However the test for these assumptions is a plot of the data itself. The actual underlying assumption is that, if these requirements have not been met, then there is no reason for the data points to fall on a line. Every time a credible researcher or lab runs these tests on valid samples and plots the results, the data points fall on a line. Not only is the age of the Earth determined, but the underlying assumption is validated - something creationists, including Riddle, never tell the reader. Scientific case closed. The Earth is old, immensely old, deep time old, 4.54 billion years old. Deal with it. The remaining chapters are equally shallow and inane but this review is already pushing size limits. Note to AiG: include some reality-based (honest) answers in the next edition - and leave deconstructionism up to Derrida.