I graduated from Ball State University in May 1997 with a degree in history, and I really didn't know what I was until I came across this whole age of the earth discussion.
I guess you could classify me as someone who believes old earth creation (who accepts scientific models of how the universe/earth was formed billions of years ago), but I'm open to the idea that evolution can explain the shifts in biology. I don't claim to have all the answers, but it's a field that I find to be interesting.
I just have a hard time, from a purely historical perspective, accepting a literal 24 hour 6-day interpretation of Genesis 1 & 2, when the archeological evidence that has been found serves as proof that the earth is older than a mere 6000 years.
The biblical city of Jericho serves as proof, I pulled this information off wikipedia, in the article on the Fertile Crescent:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertile_Crescent
The western zone around the
Jordan and upper
Euphrates rivers gave rise to the first known Neolithic
farming settlements (referred to as
Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (
PPNA)), which date to around
9,000 BC (and includes sites such as
Jericho). This region, alongside
Mesopotamia (which lies to the east of the Fertile Crescent, between the rivers
Tigris and
Euphrates), also saw the emergence of early
complex societies during the succeeding
Bronze Age. There is also early evidence from this region for
writing, and the formation of
state-level societies. This has earned the region the nickname "The Cradle of
Civilization."
There's another city in the Anatolia region Turkey, detailed here, that dates back more than 6000 years too:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catal_huyuk
Çatalhöyük /ʧɑtɑl højyk/ (also
Çatal Höyük and
Çatal Hüyük, or any of the three without
diacritics;
çatal is
Turkish for fork,
höyük for mound) was a very large
Neolithic and
Chalcolithic settlement in southern
Anatolia, dating from around
7500 BCE for the lowest layers. It is perhaps the largest and most sophisticated Neolithic site yet uncovered.
