“Although I am a creationist, I am not a young earth creationist.”
I am in the same boat. Schroeder explains that the Talmud has an estimate of the age of the universe at about 14.2 billion years, vs. the circa 1990 scientific estimate of 14.4 billion years (or maybe it is the other way around - I haven’t read the book in a while). The difference between the Talmudic number and 5,776 years of age is ALL about the time before Adam was created - and any theologian with any knowledge and honesty would admit that we have NO idea how long those “days” were, in human terms. Shroeder has an analysis to account for that “discrepancy” - and it is resolved via the Theory of Relativity (i.e. time dilation).
Incidentally, I find it SUPREMELY interesting that the rabbis who wrote the Talmud starting about 2 thousand years ago could have had ANY inkling of the true age of the universe as accepted by modern science...which is utterly impossible without being given the figure (directly or indirectly) by some being/Being with that knowledge.
Schroeder goes to great lengths in the introduction of his book to point out that a text of some 300,000 letters in length, written some 3,000 years ago for a bunch of desert nomads, could not possibly go into the level of detail that modern science does - there are literally libraries full of scientific knowledge, and the volume grows daily. Thus, by necessity, lots of the account of Genesis MUST be allegory that can only be interpreted in light of modern science.
Are the Ten Commandments to be taken literally ... or allegorically?