Pericles,
I've tried to engage and answer your specific questions as best I can. I'm sorry if you weren't able to get that much out of The Creation Answers Book. It's value is in its breadth, answering a wide range of questions succinctly. So it's perhaps better for giving an overview than for its depth of detail. (And it's good you can download it free off the Net.) But I would disagree with your contention that the authors are focussing on minor or peripheral pieces of evidence. I would say they're attempting to account for the full gamut of relevant information related to the topic..

The sum of these questions (as well as others) is to ask which framework, creation or evolution, can best account for and explain the evidence. I still believe that you could make more effort to try and see the issue from the other's point of view. Without this, trying to analyse the relative strengths of one position against another is rather difficult. Although I would like to give you credit for reading the book and at least making that effort to go part of the way.

Leading creationists, such as the authors of the Answers book, have earned their doctorates in science from secular universities. They were raised and educated in an environment that taught naturalistic evolution as the only option. So they are very aware of what is going on on that side of the fence before being persuaded by a different view of the evidence (the creationist view). From their experience, they are more capable than most of seeing the issue from more than one perspective.

That's interesting, Dan S de Merengue.

>>Pericles, I've tried to engage and answer your specific questions as best I can.<<

I've had a quick look over the "Answers" exchanges, and to be completely frank, I can see not one single instance where you have actively engaged with the question. Instead, you have chosen first to obfuscate, then to generalize the question out of existence.

You suggested that the authors of Answers applied themselves to "objective evidence". When challenged on this, you retreat to the position that it answers "a wide range of questions succinctly", which is the most blatant sidestep since JPR Williams terrorized England in the seventies.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGkEK3F1COU

>>I would say they're attempting to account for the full gamut of relevant information related to the topic.<<

Not really. On the topic of the speed of light alone, they felt the need to rely upon a new cosmology, that even according to the earnest Christians at Reasons to Believe, was "irremediably flawed". They then proceeded to ignore all other relevant data, the residual inference being that, because they can imagine it - and it fits with their beliefs - it must therefore be true.

Which as far as I am concerned is not a valid approach to problem-solving.

>>Leading Creationists... are very aware of what is going on on that side of the fence before being persuaded by a different view of the evidence (the creationist view).<<

Thing is, though, on their new side of the fence, they become big fish in a tiny pool, which might have influenced their conversion.

Frankly, I find it difficult to believe that any intelligent individual actually believes this Creationist malarkey. More likely, they have discovered that it is much more amusing to find new ways to annoy people, with ever-more-outlandish ideas on how the universe is only 6,000 years old.

Hey, it's an explanation. And it fits the facts.

Using the logic available to us in Answers, that's enough to make it true.

Pericles,
As I read it, your main query involves the cosmology put forward by Russell Humphreys. In this, they were attempting to answer the question of how light had sufficient time to travel such grand distances across an allegedly young universe. His model of white hole cosmology accounts for the evidence, and is based on reasonable underlying assumptions.

The age of the earth is what's at issue, as the Biblical age of roughly 6000 years is incompatible with evolutionary theories, while a solar system older than 4 billion years is clearly out of sync with the Bible. So given the big gap between the two, one of these estimates must be very wrong. So perhaps the Answers book could have focused on the more basic question of what evidence is there clearly supporting a young universe.

While preferring to focus on the former (more commonly asked) question about distant starlight, the Answers book does offer a link which addresses this other question. Some of these points (in the realm of astronomy) include :

-Steady retraction of the moon implying a calculation of its distance from earth closer than the Roche Limit less than one billion years ago;
-evidence of recent volcanic activity on the moon suggests it's not billions of years old as that long should have cooled down;
-the existence of magnetic fields found for various planets in our solar system which defy long age theories as they should be long since "dead";
-Saturn's rings increasingly recognized as being relatively short-lived. Like Jupiter’s and Uranus’s, they appear to be decaying in a millennial time-frame.

So while the age of the earth is impossible to prove, there are many indicators that the solar system is much younger than is often generally asserted.

Not "main", Dan S de Merengue.

>>Pericles, As I read it, your main query involves the cosmology put forward by Russell Humphreys.<<

Just one of many. This merely stood out, as a blatant application of pseudo-science, the invention of a theory that at a cursory glance would seem to have validity, but on inspection requires the reader to focus on one insignificant factor, and ignore the important stuff.

A bit like pointing out the winding road that is apparent over Mona Lisa's right shoulder, and asserting that because it was clearly big enough to take un camion pesante, it proves that they had HGVs in Leonardo da Vinci's day.

Only if you had set out to prove the existence of heavy goods vehicles in the sixteenth century, would you even bother to come up with such a theory. Particularly when all the other evidence favours the diesel engine being a nineteenth-century invention.

But I'm not sure what you mean by this:

>>So while the age of the earth is impossible to prove, there are many indicators that the solar system is much younger than is often generally asserted.<<

The difference between the generally accepted science and the bible story is six orders of magnitude. A factor of two million.

Which renders this calculation fairly meaningless:

>>Steady retraction of the moon implying a calculation of its distance from earth closer than the Roche Limit less than one billion years ago<<

Is that two million times closer, or two million times further away?? Either would appear impossible.

>>evidence of recent volcanic activity on the moon suggests it's not billions of years old as that long should have cooled down<<

The question that immediately occurred to me was, "so what age does the 'recent volcanic activity' suggest?

Oh.

This:

"scientists noticed that volcanic gas has been released from the lunar surface within the last 1 million to 10 million years.""

http://www.space.com/3090-moon-burps-reveal-volcanic-activity.html

I'm really not sure how that supports a case for a six thousand year-old universe.

But as always, I'm very happy to hear your side of the story.

I was hoping you would engage with some of the evidence. Perhaps I put each too briefly. I'll try and clarify the points made. For the purposes of this post, 'young' refers to an age in the order of 6000 years, and 'old' as several billion.

I chose four examples (just four of many possibilities) which show prima facie evidence consistent with a young solar system. I kept to astronomy, as astronomy/cosmology seemed to be the main, perhaps the only, part of the Answers Book that you have been considering.

1) The moon is steadily retracting from the earth at a measurable rate of a few centimetres per year. Extrapolating this back in time, the moon would have been closer than it is now. There is a limit to how close realistically the moon could get before gravitational forces destroy it, called the Roche Limit. Such calculations would put it a lot less than a billion years. This evidence is consistent with a young, recently created earth and moon, but not compatible with old earth theories.

2)  Evidence from magma flows of more recent volcanic activity on Earth’s moon is inconsistent with its supposed old age because it should have long since cooled if it were billions of years old, and our moon should not have been volcanically active so long. Yet more recent volcanic activity may be consistent with a young age.

3) Similarly, the existence of magnetic fields found for various planets in our solar system and their moons defy long age theories. For instance, a planet as small as mercury should have cooled down by now to have a solid core if so old, and therefore should not have such a magnetic field.

4) The rate of change / disappearance of Saturn’s rings is inconsistent with their supposed old age. Observations over recent centuries imply rapid ring spreading and dissipation. They appear to be decaying in a millennial time-frame.

I also would add that Humphreys' white hole cosmology accounts for all general and relevant evidence (speed of light, red shifts, etc). Therefore your Mona Lisa analogy is out of place.

My response seems to have become lost in the ether, Dan S de Merengue, but I'll give it another shot.

But first of all, this is a little puzzling.

>>For the purposes of this post, 'young' refers to an age in the order of 6000 years, and 'old' as several billion.<<

Would your young-earth creationism theories not fall apart, if "old" was anything greater than six thousand years? If you are prepared to accept a version of "young" that allows the moon's volcanic activity to have taken place "within the last 1 million to 10 million years", surely the same logic will accept thirteen billion for the universe as a whole?

I'm puzzled. Help me out here.