Karl, you claim that Jesus 'never read that the Earth was the age that you imply.' Unfortunately, you are incorrect there. Firstly, if you call yourself by the name of Christ, them by definition, you acknowledge Him as God. As God, being Eternal AND having created the Earth, He would most certainly know the 'when' of Creation. We know from Luke 4 that Jesus read from Isaiah 61:1-2, proclaiming the fulfillment of that prophecy. He also calls Himself God in many additional Scriptures. If you choose not to believe what He said well, that is YOUR problem. Only YOU can choose for yourself, if you believe Him.
Secondly, in Matthew 19:4-5, Jesus quotes [a] Genesis 1:27 and [b]Genesis 2:24: “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’[a] and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’[b]?" As these quoted verses match the current Tanakh, one may presume that today's Genesis 1, is close to the Genesis 1 from Jesus' time of ministry on Earth. This is further evidenced from the Dead Sea scrolls, where the only variance with the Masoretic Text in the Creation story is in Genesis 1:9 which adds "and dry land appeared" (Source). If you choose to believe that this is a corrupted quote in the New Testament, I refer you to 2 Timothy 3:16 and Matthew 5:18.
Karl and TXnMA: Genesis 4-6, lists the people and the length of their lives, dates of birth, etc. from Cain and Abel up to the flood, Genesis 7-11 details the flood and post-flood. Jesus quoted from 24 of the 39 books of the Tanakh, so He was well versed in it, as one would expect of God, whose book it is!
TXnMA: The people of Jesus time believed that the Creation story was correct, so Jesus did not correct them on it. Where He DID correct people, was on interpretation of the Law, especially by the Pharisees. Note His comments in the Olivet discourse (Matthew 5-7).
Long before Ussher, and long after, Christians believed in a young Earth. For example, many based the Earth's age on the Septuagint: Clement of Alexandria (5592 BC), Julius Africanus (5501 BC), Eusebius (5228 BC), Jerome (5199 BC) Hippolytus of Rome (5500 BC), Theophilus of Antioch (5529 BC), Sulpicius Severus (5469 BC), Isidore of Seville (5336 BC), Panodorus of Alexandria (5493 BC), Maximus the Confessor (5493 BC), George Syncellus (5492 BC) and Gregory of Tours (5500 BC).
Between the 10th and 18th centuries, after the publication of the Masoretic Texts, the calculations were closer to 4000BC. Among them were: Maimonides (4058 BC), Louis Cappel (4005 BC), James Ussher (4004 BC), Sir Isaac Newton (4000 BC), Johannes Kepler (27 April, 3977 BC) [based on his book Mysterium], Melanchthon (3964 BC), Martin Luther (3961 BC), John Lightfoot (3960 BC), Joseph Justus Scaliger (3949 BC), Christoph Helvig (3947 BC), Gerardus Mercator (3928 BC), Matthieu Brouard (3927 BC), Benito Arias Montano (3849 BC), Andreas Helwig (3836 BC), David Gans (3761 BC) and Gershom ben Judah (3754 BC). Did they all suffer from 'mind-barf' as you so inelegantly put it?
Even Origen and Augustine, who believe the Creation story to be an allegory, thought that Earth was relatively new, less than 10,000 years old. Calvin, Luther and other Reformers believed in a literal interpretation of Genesis. Belief in an 'old Earth' is a product of the so-called 'enlightenment'.
The problem becomes, if you believe that the Creation story is wrong, what else do you disbelieve about the Bible? Was Jesus just a man? Did He perform any miracles? Did He even exist? If all scripture is God-breathed, and God is omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent, how can there be an error in the Bible? Where do you draw the line? It is a slippery slope that brings to mind that question asked in the garden, as found in Genesis 3:1: “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”
I most certainly do not believe "that the Creation story is wrong"!
In fact, as a Bible-believing Christian who is also a physical scientist, I believe (and am working to create a graphic presentation/video that illustrates) that mankind's accumulated "scientific" knowledge of Creation is -- just now -- "catching up with" the truths revealed in Genesis.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
However, I am convinced that your (and other YECs') primitive misinterpretation of the timing of it is wrong.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I do believe that, just as Scripture says, God created ex nihilo (and formed) "all that is" in six (6) of His "workdays".
~~~~~~~~~~
What I do not believe is that arrogant, self-centered, self-important, created humankind has any right to belittle or downgrade Almighty God -- by insisting that the pace of HIS days (and the timing of all His created universe, and all its history) -- must be determined by the inconstant spin rate He imposed upon this particular ball of mud upon which He decided to place us.
As one of my very favorite fellow Christians (and Freepers) has repeatedly stated:
"Man is not the measure of God."