“But those who use all this to argue that therefore the Earth is only 6,000 years old, are ...”
...being silly. God is not bound by time. Whatever methods he used to bring all this about could take as much or as little time as He pleased.
After you get past the fact that God created the heavens and the Earth, all that is seen and unseen, what does it matter whether He did it in the twinkling of an eye or billions of years?
When you say that God created Adam from dirt, are you really excluding the possibility that He used a method that is in complete congruence with what science has discovered about the origins of the universe and our planet?
I’ve been toying with a spectulation—and that’s all it is, just idle speculation—that when God breathed life into Adam, that is, when He ensouled humanity, it might have been just after the big die-off after Toba.
Maybe the dieback served to eliminate some genes He didn’t want in homo sap.
Again, just idle speculation for the purpose of amusing myself.
I agree with you, but apparently a good many FRiends here don't agree with us, and for reasons that -- even after many lengthy discussions -- are not obvious to me.
What's blindingly obvious is that everywhere you look scientifically, God left us with abundant clues about what He did and how He did it.
It remains only to ask "why", and for that, of course, nature and science have no answers.
For that, you must turn to the Bible, and to a church or other institution expressly intended to answer such questions.
;-)