These statements are not irrrelevant at all, they are truth.
These doctrines are historically the position of the Church.
Just because you can find a liberal version of protestantism abandoning the Bible doesnt prove THE CHURCH held to those beliefs as a whole.
In fact, the abandonement of these doctrines about 100 years ago WAS A NEW THING and very short lived until RA TORREY'S "THE FUNDMENTALS" came out.
To make the claim that the Churches didnt hold to a young Earth 100 years ago, is to make a broad statement about what was actually a minority position of only a few churches. The Fundamentals was widely read by all denominations, not just Baptists.
And ever since, those who rejected THE FUNDAMENTALS have slid to the mere shadow of the Christian churches they once were.
RECENT CREATION
In his gospel, Luke, the beloved physician, recorded 75 generations from Jesus to Adam.26 Using the numbers found in the Old Testament, Theophilus and others 27 added up the number of years from the creation of the world. Theophilus concluded,
There are not two myriads of myriads (28) of years, even though Plato said such a period had elapsed between the deluge and his own time, . . . The world is not uncreated not is there spontaneous production of everything, as Pythagoras and the others have babbled; instead the world is created and is providentially governed by the God who made everything. And the whole period of time and the years can be demonstrated to those who wish to learn the truth. . . . The total number of years from the creation of the world is 5,695.29
Regarding the total number of years, Theophilus acknowledged,
If some period has escaped our notice, says 50 or 100 or even 200 years, at any rate it is not myriads, or thousands of years as it was for Plato . . . and the rest of those who wrote falsehoods. It may be that we do not know the exact total of all the years simply because the additional months and days are not recorded in the sacred books."30
Origen (b. 185), the great theologian of the Greek churches, defended "the Mosaic account of the creation, which teaches that the world is not yet ten thousand years old, but very much under that."31
And Augustine (b. 354), the great bishop of the Latin churches, wrote, "the Scripture . . . has paramount authority, . . . to which we yield assent in all matters."32 "That God made the world, we can believe from no one more safely than from God Himself."33
On the age of man and the earth, Augustine wrote, Some hold the same opinion regarding men that they hold regarding the world itself, that they have always been . . . . And when they are asked, how, . . . they reply that most, if not all lands, were so desolated at intervals by fire and flood, that men were greatly reduced in numbers, and . . . thus there was at intervals a new beginning made. . . . But they say what they think, not what they know. They are deceived . . . by those highly mendacious documents which profess to give the history of many thousand years, though reckoning by the sacred writings, we find that not 6,000 years have yet passed.34
Care to recent?? You stated that it is only a RECENT thing to believe in a young eqarth...
See? All you have to do is Believe what the Bibel says, and it all falls into place.
Race, Buddy, are you even trying to follow the conversation? I didn't say they were globally irrelevant. I said they were irrelevant to the issue I happened to be discussing when you replied, which was the prevailing views among Christians about the age of the earth and "flood geology" since the advent of modern geological science. Geology began to take shape as a scientific discipline early in the 19th Century. Your quotes were from the early part of the millennium!
BTW, was it also "truth" when Theophilus, who you cited, claimed that the heavens were a solid dome covering the (by implication flat) earth?
In fact, the abandonement of these doctrines about 100 years ago WAS A NEW THING and very short lived until RA TORREY'S "THE FUNDMENTALS" came out.
Guess what, Race, I've actually read The Fundamentals (at least the articles therein that address scientific issues) but it seems that you haven't. If you did you'd know that not one of the articles takes a young earth position, nor adopts "flood geology," but instead affirm or accept the findings of geological science that the earth is ancient. What's more, none of articles that discuss it unreservedly rejects evolution, instead adopting views ranging from acceptance, to neutrality to mild skepticism.
Are you finally done pontificating on matters you don't know a damn thing about? (Never mind. I know the answer to that from experience.)