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Scientists have theories about how planets are born, and virtually all of them have in mind big balls of lifeless, molten rocks that harden and develop over millions and millions of years. (Naturally, they have no way of proving this or recreating it, but let's just give them the benefit of the doubt for now.) What if the earth wasn't "born"? What if it didn't go through the process one would expect a new planet to follow? What if the earth, like Adam, was created a bit older?

OK, but this generates some more questions...

If God created Adam & Eve in order to have someone to worship him, then why didn't he just create the rest of civilization by taking 6 billion lumps of clay & breathing into them? Why create an adult man & woman instantaneously, but then use a completely different mechanism to populate the rest of the Earth?

OK, so he wanted a solid Earth for Adam & Eve to live on. But why lay down all those fossils? Why lay them down in precisely such a way to make them look as if they were once living creatures who are related to each other in a genealogical tree spanning hundreds of millions of years? And why go to the effort of laying these fossils down in between layers of igneous rock containing several different radioactive elements - and their dauther elements - whose ratios are precisely what you'd expect them to be if they were layed down in sequence over 4.5 billion years? What does precisely-correlated ratios of radioactive elements vs. their daughter products have to do with the livability of the Earth?

Why do we see the light of stars & galaxies that are billions of light-years away? This does not make the heavens proclaim the glory of God - it makes them shout "old universe!" Why would God blink the universe into existence in precisely the way to make it look like it's 13.7 billion years old?

No, the only explanation for an old-looking universe is: God is playing a diabolically clever trick on us. IOW, God is lying to us. Now why would he lie to us like that?

This is the contradiction you YEC'ers must confront. Which of these two fundamentally contradictory beliefs are you willing to give up - your YEC interpretation of your holly book, or your lyin' eyes?

"If God created Adam & Eve in order to have someone to worship him, then why didn't he just create the rest of civilization by taking 6 billion lumps of clay & breathing into them? Why create an adult man & woman instantaneously, but then use a completely different mechanism to populate the rest of the Earth?"

In addition to this conundrum, there is God's perplexing use of a messy global flood and wholesale slaughter to "re-start" the world. Are we to presume that God lost the power to "blink" a new world and new humans into existence? Using an inelegant cudgel in place of a seamless display of galactic magic just seems so, well, minor league.

Kind of leads to that most heretical of thoughts -- Are we reading the Bible wrong?

Perhaps. As stated in the article that started this thread: "One must consider if Wieland's reading of the Bible is as poor as his reading of not only the scientific literature he distorts, but even the words from his own hand."