“On the other hand you have to be willing to believe that the earth is several thousand years old, and that most of what geology and geography and paleontology and astronomy and meteorology and many other sciences teaches is incorrect.”
Actually, that is not the case at all. Carefully reading the text, one can see that God created everything in a mature state, plants yielding seed, creation of man not boy, etc. Therefore, it is possible that the universe was created in a short amount of time and yet science be correct in its measurments. Personally, I prefer to think the Bible teaches what happened and science is attempting to explain how, but that is just me.
So, God created a universe in a way to deceive us into believing it was billions of years old and He didn't exist?