Or perhaps you would say God didn’t actually create Adam? That the story God told us in Genesis isn’t really true?
We do not actually know if Adam was a real person, or if he was a literary construct meant to embody a human quality. However, if Adam was a real man, then we can take the moment that God revealed Himself to Adam as the time when Adam was "born-again"--the way that many Christians are born-again when they receive the word of Jesus into their hearts.
This “consistent and ubiquitous evidence of great age” you speak of makes an unwarranted assumption about what the earth looked like when God created it - namely, that it looked “new”. What does a “new” earth look like?
Scientific observation is not about making assumptions. It is about observation and extrapolation, about making and testing hypotheses, about continually adding to the body of knowledge about the physical universe and revising the framework (aka the theory) of that knowledge as it expands. We know what the earth looked like at any given point in its creation, because astronomers can look with their telescopes and see other solar systems at any stage of development, from the time they are coalescing from clouds of interstellar dust, to the time they are full systems with a sun and planet, to the time when that sun dies. We have a pretty good idea of the life cycle of stars and planets, and can apply that knowledge to understand our own planet. And so on--as I said previously, the evidence of great age is thorough and ubiquitous.
But that is MAN’S assumption. If God’s account of creation is true, that assumption doesn’t fit the facts and can therefore be discarded.
If my faith has to be maintained by pretending that the physical universe is not what it appears to be, what breaks here is the faith. Even if you could round up every scientist and force them into reeducation camps until they renounce their confidence in the actual evidence, that evidence will not disappear. Unfortunately, this rigid requirement by creationists that we must perform all kinds of mental gymnastics in order to literally believe the stories of creation in Genesis is not conducive to bringing young people to Christianity.
They tie God’s hands and say He not allowed to create anything unless He makes it look as old or as new as they think it should. But God doesn’t submit to man. It is man who ought to submit to God.
Observing that the universe is billions of years old does not "tie God's hands." I would say that those who pretend the evidence of an old universe does not exist so that they can try to believe that a moral lesson in the Bible is literal are the ones trying to tie God's hands. To believe that the evidence of an old universe, the evidence of continuing evolutionary processes of everything, is an illusion planted by God is to say that God is a liar and deceiver. As I have pointed out before, the term "Prince of Lies" does *not* refer to God.
You say the “the story of Genesis is meant to teach morality,” but do you even believe it? What sort of morality can we learn from One who lies to us about the creation and makes up stories from the very start?
Human beings have made up stories to teach moral lessons ever since we have had language. The fact that God inspired primitive peoples to record the moral lessons that He told them does not make God a liar. It makes God a teacher.
I'll even go out on a limb here and guess that you do not literally believe every word in the Bible--that there are passages in the Bible that you accept are moral lessons, not literal accounts. It's just that, for whatever reason, you want to believe that Genesis is a literal account. For me, trying to believe that the Genesis creation stories are literal hurts my brain--the stories aren't consistent with each other, and they don't even have internal consistency. It is much easier to believe that any description of creation there is highly allegorical--Occam's razor applies here.
You say that the Bible “is not a scientific document, and should not be used like one.” That’s a cop-out for those who don’t believe the Bible. What will you say next? Will you deny the record of Jesus’ death and resurrection because “the Bible is not a history book and should not be used like one”? I hope not!
It is hardly a cop-out. I do not use the Bible for scientific insight. I do not use the Journal of Biological Chemistry for spiritual guidance. The Betty Crocker Cookbook is not a mathematical treatise, nor is the Ford Lincoln maintenance manual a vacation guide. And so on. It is not a "cop-out" to observe that a document that was written for one purpose cannot be used for a different purpose.
No one here is looking to the Bible for scientific instruction. We are looking to it to find out how the heavens and the earth came into existence. And that’s what we find, in as much detail as God chooses to give us.
When you say that "we" are looking to the Bible to find out how everything came into existence, you are saying that you are using the Bible as a scientific document--which it is not. God gave us curiosity and intelligence so that we could make direct observations and learn about our universe. This is one way that God gives purpose to our lives, by letting us discover the universe.
Only 2 men in all of human history were born with perfect body, soul, and spirit, not requiring rebirth. That was Adam and the second Adam, our Lord and savior Christ Jesus.
Adam was already born with a human spirit, so wasn't in need of being reborn, until after the fall.
Read it directly, but only through faith in Christ and let God direct your heart.
Although I agree with you on the age of the earth I do have to take exception to this.
As Christians we KNOW that Adam was a real man. As followers of Christ we only have to look at what our messiah and his followers believed.
In Luke 3 the genealogy of Jesus's stepfather Joseph is chronicled and leads directly back to Adam:
Luk 3:38 the son of Enosh, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.
Jesus affirmed the validity of the Adam and Eve story:
Mat 19:4 And He answered and said to them, "Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning 'MADE THEM MALE AND FEMALE,'
And the first disciples, based on the teaching of Jesus, confirmed the existence of Adam and Eve as put forth in scripture.
1Ti_2:13 For Adam was formed first, then Eve.
1Ti_2:14 And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression.
So Christians...at least those who believe Scripture, Jesus and the first disciples, should absolutely believe that Adam was a real person.