This thread is an example of people 'speaking past each other'. That is often the case when polarized minds approach a topic both sides want to dominate from their respective perspectives. It is absurd to address YEC as a scientific concept, but it is the basis of so many polarized minds.
Enters Schroeder, and Schroeder addresses the age of the Universe as if he is seeing two separate perspectives which can both be right and why. He explains the 6.5+ days Age as a perspective from the big bang looking to our epoch, using the doubling of the Universe of spacetime as a measuring tool roughly aligned to a twenty-four hour cycle. Admittedly, this is a cumbersome approach. But it does make sense when he then switches perspectives to address the Age from our epoch looking back to the big bang.
You address the two notions of the Age of the Universe as starting from a big bang and the steady-state/Hoyle notion of space and time always being, as the background in which matter and energy swirl through changes but remain eternal. This notion is very Smithian in nature (the Mormon founder, Joseph Smith) in that Mormonism posits matter as eternal and merely something manipulated by the god of Mormonism, not created by that god. The big bang posits space and time coming into existence with the big bang and Schroeder relates Nahmanides' idea that time takes hold very early in the expansion begun at the bang. Here's a bit from Schroeder's essay:
The Creation of Time
Each day of creation is numbered. Yet Nahmanides points out that there is discontinuity in the way the days are numbered. The verse says: "There is evening and morning, Day One." But the second day doesn't say "evening and morning, Day Two." Rather, it says "evening and morning, a second day." And the Torah continues with this pattern: "Evening and morning, a third day... a fourth day... a fifth day... the sixth day." Only on the first day does the text use a different form: not "first day," but "Day One" ("Yom Echad"). Many English translations that make the mistake of writing "a first day." That's because editors want things to be nice and consistent. But they throw out the cosmic message in the text! That message, as Nahmanides points out, is that there is a qualitative difference between "one" and "first." One is absolute; first is comparative.
Additionally, this Creation scenario follows an intelligent design:
How we perceive time
We look at the universe, and say, "How old is the universe? Looking back in time, the universe is approximately 15 billion years old." That's our view of time. But what is the Bible's view of time looking from the beginning? How does it see time?Nahmanides taught that although the days are 24 hours each, they contain "kol yemot ha-olam" - all the ages and all the secrets of the world. Nahmanides says that before the universe, there was nothing... but then suddenly the entire creation appeared as a minuscule speck. He gives a description for the speck: something very tiny, smaller than a grain of mustard. And he says that is the only physical creation. There was no other physical creation; all other creations were spiritual. The Nefesh (the soul of animal life, Genesis 1:21) and the Neshama (the soul of human life, Genesis 1:27) are spiritual creations.
There's only one physical creation, and that creation was a tiny speck. In that speck was all the raw material that would be used for making everything else. Nahmanides describes the substance as "dak me'od, ein bo mamash" - very thin, no substance to it. And as this speck expanded out, this substance, so thin that it has no material substance, turned into matter as we know it.
Nahmanides further writes: "Misheyesh, yitfos bo zman" - from the moment that matter formed from this substance-less substance, time grabs hold. Time is created at the beginning. But time "grabs hold" when matter condenses from the substance-less substance of the big bang creation. When matter condenses, congeals, coalesces, out of this substance so thin it has no material substance, that's when the biblical clock starts.
Defining that (Schroeder's creation scenario) expansion of the Universe with the phrase 'time dilation' is not ... well, not accurate. The notion of stretching space results from the perspective that space and time progressed from a speck to what we have now, with matter expanding into 'something' barely ahead but accelerating in expansion. Time, or if you prefer spacetime, is a volume. And this volume appears to be malleable. It is also nearly bursting with energy, the zero-point energy that drives the expansion and maintains the congealed state of energy known as matter.
One last point and I shall leave the finishing comments to your capable hands: when Schroeder brings Einstein and relativity into his essay, I tend to pay attention since Schroeder is very qualified to refer thereto as an instructor in such notions, with a lifetime of research and study on these facets of the Universe.
I'm sorry, I don't understand. Are you saying that Fred Hoyle was inspired by Joseph Smith, or that you think Joseph Smith made a contribution to cosmology?
Trying to make the case that Nahmanides stumbled upon General Relativity through Torah scholarship in the 13th century is, to put it mildly, ludicrous. It should go right alongside the claims of the modern Nostradamus fan club.
But that's fine for Schroeder to make it a hobby of his, and it makes for interesting reading.
But let us please, please keep in mind that what Schroeder is talking about is NOT Ham's Young Earth Creationism. Perception of time due to general relativity from the Big Bang is NOT flood geology. Schroeder is trying to reconcile how creation might have taken 6 days in the scheme of general relativity, NOT that the Earth is LITERALLY 6,000 YEARS OLD.