Way Back Book Review

Mark Buzard, a friend of mine, loaned me the book Way Back. I recommend it. I'll try not to include any spoilers.

The basic plot is that a group of scientists and security men are sent back in time to the age of Noah. They get to encounter the garden of Eden, dinosaurs, the antediluvian culture, and the Ark. There are some other subplots, but that would be spoiling the book.

Sam Batterman is the author and seems to have done a lot of research for this book. Unfortunately, not all his sources were good ones and they weren't consistent with each other. Here are some good and bad points about the book from a Young Earth Creationist perspective.

On pages 92 and 126 he describes a pre-Flood vapor canopy. He presents an older view of the canopy (from the 80's at the latest) and Creationists no longer emphasize the canopy. But he does well.

On page 74, he describes a Biblical timeline from Creation to the present. On page 76, he estimates the population of the pre-Flood earth as between 3-9 billion. Good job.

On pages 130-134, a character describes the Intelligent Design argument for Creation and includes an excellent though simple description of bacterial flagellum. I was impressed.

On page 192 he discusses the use of laminate boards on the ark. I just heard about that summer of '08.

His picture of the Ark in Ch 27 was excellent. He uses AIG's new "thinking outside the box" shape of the ark. I'm not convinced the new view is right, but I was pleased to see a serious description of the ark.

On page 194, the map they discover is consistent with many views of a pre-Flood single continent.

Ch 44 and Ch 49 describe the Flood itself. It is excellent, although a version that I have never heard elsewhere. The violence and the total destruction -- not only of the people and culture, but of the very geography -- of the sinful antediluvian world. Very well done.

Amazingly, on pp 69-70 and 78 they discover the original location of the Garden of Eden by following modern rivers and river beds. If the Flood occurred as described in Ch 44 and 49, the ancient rivers and rivers bed would be permanently wiped off the face of the earth. There is no way any modern rivers or river bed survived from before the Flood. Ch 13 concerning the Arabian Shield seems to me to have the same flaw, although I have never studied the Arabian Shield.

On page 93 he describes a parasaurolophus trumpeting. Parasaurolophuses had a hollow bone on their skull (6 foot long, I believe). Typical (evolutionary) books suggest it may have been used for trumpeting. Creationist books tend to suggest that it was used for "breathing" smoke and fire along the lines of a six foot bombardier beetle. I was disappointed that he didn't follow the creationist suggestion.

On page 128 the characters are discussing micro-evolution and macro-evolution. They limit micro-evolution to species and macro-evolution to larger categories than the species. This is a misunderstanding of the meaning of species and kinds. The key difference is that micro-evolution involves rearranging existing genetic information to form a new breed or species. Macro-evolution involves adding genetic information so that a one-celled protozoa evolves into a fabulous human being. The was the topic is discussed in Way Back, it sounds like creationists believe in fixity of the species, which they don't.

Overall, it was an excellent book and I highly recommend. I also recommend that if you read old earth creationist literature, ID literature, and young earth creationist literature, you need to make sure your final ideas are internally consistent. If Sam Batterman had done that a good book would have been even better.