Young Earth or Old Earth?

A recent question I came across sparked a rant...the question:
"If Biblical creationists believe that man and dinosaurs lived at the same time, where is the evidence?"
Answers In Genesis has a through article on this topic.
This has sparked my interests, even though I am still not sure if I agree with all of the conservative ideas and theories of Ken Ham and the guys at Answers in Genesis.

I recommend that you check out the article...

My highlight is the evidence from the Flood. And what I find very interesting is that both Young Earth and Old Earth Christians use the Flood evidence to support their arguments. This is so cool because even though, our time frames are quite different, it still goes to show that the evidence from the flood is so significant...how do non-Christians deal with it?

Now my rant and what I am learning:
Some times I spend a lot of time on complex, non-essentials. Before I go into too much depth, I will admit that this is a non-essential. We as Christians are free to argue and free to agree to disagree...in the end it is not important. We are all going to be living together in Heaven in the end...in fact my step-dad chooses not to argue for any side because he brings up an awesome point, he said, "I choose not to answer your question, because it distracts me from what is truly important." He relieves that sharing the Gospel message and living the laws of the Bible are what is truly important not debating specific theological issues. I

As far as non-essentials go this one is fun to talk about, very interesting...and I will say I am no expert. I am still struggling through this issue myself and am extremely open to all sides of the debate.
Here is what I know and think of each side so far....
Ken Ham and the extreme conservative...believe that 6 day Creation is literal and actually occurred in 6 days!
This I always find so interesting and no one has really given me a good answer so far, (...I have studied the Answers in Genesis website and I even visited the Creation Museum in Cincinnati, Ohio...), but I always think to myself...yes, but the word for DAY in Hebrew "yom," has several possible meanings...(even Answers in Genesis will admit that.)

The conservative, young earth believers are so set on the literal meaning, they never really even addressed the other liberal theories. They pretty much ignored the idea that "yom" could be interpreted differently and instead merely gave me "If the earth were a billion years old then..." arguments. While, had not heard some of these external evidence arguments before (I was impressed by some of them) I still was left wondering...because I value the internal evidence of the Bible. And so far, I think it is still possible to go either way according to Internal Biblical evidence. We know that with God all things are possible, even an old earth scenario. Besides there is some great external evidence that they are also ignoring when they are making their philosophical conservative arguments. (But this blog post is not my time to get into all these arguments, sorry for wetting your appetite.) Creation Museum did do a good job though of presenting the Gospel, that was impressive and honorable, for a conservative or liberal theologian!

The staff at Apologetics.com did a show on this topic and they are Old Earth proponents. It was a little surprising to me, but I really liked their arguments. They used a lot more internal evidence from within the Bible. They gave the "yom" argument, as stated above but they also referenced several other Bible texts (one particular in Hebrews) showing how God's idea of time is completely different from ours as humans! We have no idea for sure how long each "yom/day/time period" consisted of in Genesis. It might have been thousands or even millions of years between each "day." One really strong point that stood out from their arguments was from Creation account itself....One the third 'day', God lets the plants bear fruit....(this will take more than 24 hours normally). After day five God lets the animals be "fruitful." And agian after day six God allows man to be fruitful, produce things, and fill the earth...
THe question could be asked, did God creat them with fruit or did he LET them create fruit over time?
Now agian, using my own words agianst myself, God could have done it in 6 days, sure! All things are possible with God!

Finally my final point is that I want to side with the Bible above and beyond choosing sides or picking the most correct solution. Sometimes this makes me seem like a flip flopper (or more conservative on some points and more liberal on others) but this is partly because people look at issues with a false dichotomy too many times. When in reality the middle ground is sometimes best. Be open on issues but back your self in the Word of God!