Rating: 
Summary: Misleading in theology, exegetical history and science
Review: Where do I begin, when a whole book was written to counteract the many errors (Creation and Time by Van Bebber and Taylor, Eden Productions)? OK, from each of the categories above:Theology:
Creationists have often pointed out that there were many words or phrases that God could have used to describe a billions-of-years-old creation -- IF that's what He had intended to communicate. One of them is olam. But Ross claims that olam means forever, and only yom ("day") could mean long period of time. Van Bebber and Taylor pointed out that Ross's *own source* (Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament) contradicts him, stating that the Hebrew olam and its Greek equivalent aion (from which we derive the word 'eon') *often* means 'long age'. There were plenty of other words that God could have used if He had wanted to teach long periods of time. God could also have used phrases like 'x myriad myriad years ago' to teach ages of hundreds of millions of years. For a less precise indication of vast ages, God could have compared the years to the number of sand grains or stars. Yet God did not use any of these - rather, He emphasized literal days by the association of evening and morning as well as a number. Exegetical history:
Ross has an impressive-looking list of authorities that he claimed supported his day-age approach, but on checking, it's easy to see that NONE of them did. E.g. Basil the Great EXPLICITLY stated in Hexaëmeron 2:8 about the first day of creation: "24 hours measure the space of the day". Irenaeus, Lactantius and Augustine EXPLICITLY stated that the world wasn't even 6000 years old, which would logically entail that they CANNOT have regarded the creation days as long periods. For example Augustine in City of God 12:10: "Let us, then, omit the conjectures of men who know not what they say, when they speak of the nature and origin of the human race. ... They are deceived, too, by those highly mendacious documents which profess to give the history of many thousand years, though, reckoning by the sacred writings, we find that not 6000 years have yet passed." Science:
Ross claims that a main motivation of those opposing billions of years is fear that it would make evolution possible. As usual, Ross's claim betrays a willing ignorance of creationist literature as well as ignorance of evolution/variation as shown above. Many years before Ross wrote any of his books, leading creationists like Dr Duane Gish made it very clear that they believed the earth was only thousands of years old, on both biblical and scientific grounds. But Gish also strongly pointed out that evolution would be impossible even if billions of years were granted, e.g.: 'Therefore, whether the earth is ten thousand, ten million, or ten billion years old, the fossil record does not support the general theory of evolution.' [Evolution: The Fossils Say No! Creation-Life Publishers, San Diego, CA, 2nd ed., p. 43, 1973.] 'Considering an enzyme, then, of 100 amino acids, there would be no possibility whatever that a single molecule could have arisen by pure chance on earth in five billion years.' [The origin of life: theories on the origin of biological order, ICR Impact 37:iii, 1976]
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