Many have observed evidences in nature that point to an ancient earth. These evidences cause us to look deeper into the text.
I am a six day, young earth creationist. The only evidence in nature that has ever troubled me is the distance to the stars. How can we see starlight from a star or galaxy that is 200,000 light years away if the Earth is only about 6,000 years old?
Now, I never let that shake my belief in a young earth whatsoever, but it did present a problem difficult to explain.
God could have created the Earth with the appearance of age. There is some basis to this argument, Adam and Eve looked like grown adults the day they were created. So God could have simply made the starlight to be here from the moment they were created. This might be the answer.
Or, another explanation that evidence has surfaced for in recent years is that light has slowed down. There is real evidence that suggests the speed of light may have been many millions, or even billions of times faster in the very recent past. This would also affect all atomic measurements, so that radiometric dating could show things to be millions or billions of years old when they were in fact only a few thousand years old.
That may be the answer, and I am inclined to lean with this explanation.
But there are also very many legitimate scientific evidences that the Earth is only a few thousand years old.
Truth is, none of us can go back to the creation and observe it, so there is no truly scientific way to know exactly what happened and how long it took.
When scientists tell you they have scientific proof that the universe is billions of years old, they are blowing smoke. They
do not know this whatsoever.
I really don't care what science says, the scriptures say God created everything in six days, and I believe it.