@LeeWoofenden Again,when some say 1000000 0000 0000 years another say 10000 00000000 0000000 000000 000 old and then some,but 6000 can't be true! It would not suprise me if they one day said:"whe have been studying the age of the earth and universe wrong" But I do agree that there is an insane gap from creationism to the rest of the world

This question is more complicated then the Isreal and Palestine conflict

@Aigle It's really not that complicated once you realize that the original tellers of those early stories in Genesis were not writing literally of physical events, but symbolically of spiritual subjects. Once you realize that, the conflict between the Bible and science disappears entirely.

@Aigle And yes, there is some variation in how old various scientists think the universe is. But 6,000 years is not even on the radar screen. It is as close to a scientific impossibility as it's possible to get. Flatly put: the universe is not 6,000 years old. Period.

@Aigle Some articles on my blog that address this question: - Can We Really Believe the Bible? - How did God Create the Universe? Was the World Really Created in Six Days? - Heaven, Regeneration, and the Meaning of Life on Earth

On the last one, scroll down to the section titled "How do we develop a good and spiritual character?" and read the rest of the article for a brief summary of the spiritual symbolism in the first Creation story of Genesis 1:1-2:3 as it relates to our spiritual rebirth and salvation.

@Aigle I'd just like to point out that whether we're talking of the 14 billion age of the universe or just the 4 billion age of the earth, those periods are periods of process and change. Young earth creationists would say that the earth was created effectively instantaneously (although split up into six days) in a complete state. So that difference isn't in the time period, as if the same processes occurred 2.3 million times faster, but in the basic nature of creating.

If there is a god he could without difficulty create through processes or create instantaneously. Neither option is inherently better than the other, neither requires more or less faith than the other.

The issue for creationists is how they account for things in the universe which look like they developed through slow processes which would have taken longer than the time they think is available.

Creation itself is not that crucial a topic. For most creationists, the bigger issue is what implications our creation model has on the nature of death and suffering: is it natural? Is it a means by which God creates? Is it included in God's "very good" in Genesis 1:31? There are a variety of answers.