Adding up the genealogies from Adam to Jesus gives ~4,000 years. Adding 2,000 years since the time of Christ gives you your 6000 years. The presupposition is that nothing preceded your Adam and Eve. As for fossils,easy. Up until A&E disobey God neither people nor animals died, hence no fossils precede this. QED?

Rather than me providing a particular set of observations that falsify your claim, DSdM let me refer you to a starting place for your enquiry, http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Evidence_against_a_recent_creation

My point about "starting from scratch" is that if today we began to wonder about the nature of light and worked backwards through the progression of our knowledge of it, we wouldn't rationally arrive at the need for the concoction of Huygen's luminiferous aether for light's passage. In the same way, we would not rationally arrive at the need for the concoction of a creator. That is a belief that some people wish to cling to, however, and so be it.

The "God of the gaps" brigade struggles harder year by year to plug the dyke as man's knowledge grows through Bacon's form of science. Then there are the creationists, who eschew science and reason for a literal interpretation of the Bible. Believe away, DSdM, but your Aristotelian form of science was superseded in 1620.

That's pretty weak, Dan S de Merengue.

>>Dear Pericles, You've put quotation marks around something that I didn't say, which is quite misleading. I was clearly referring to informed opinion, not any random opinion, nor the opinion of a four-year-old.<<

The inverted commas were to indicate a paraphrase, as announced by the preceding phrase "You are suggesting that..."

The opinion of a four-year-old is entirely relevant, when it comes to ice-cream. It is of course limited by their experience, which is precisely the point I was making.

>>I said I was happy to discuss the contents of the '"Creation Answers Book", which contains much evidence and reasoned argument. Your summary doesn't convince me that you've read a great deal of it.<<

I have read all nineteen chapters. Most of them address esoterica such as who was Cain's wife, which while relevant to the true-believer, is hardly "objective evidence".

Chapter five discusses the difference between the scale of the universe together with the speed that light travels in order to inform us of the existence of distant galaxies, and the biblical description of heaven and earth.

After much irrelevant discourse, it prefaces the "solution" with:

"The basic biblical framework, because it comes from the Creator, is nonnegotiable, as opposed to the changing views and models of fallible people seeking to understand the data within that framework."

This puts the cart firmly before the horse. In order to arrive at the conclusion, you need to start with the premise that you are attempting to prove. "Answers", in fact, states this with some clarity.

"By basing our scientific research on the assumption that His Word is true (instead of the assumption that it is wrong or irrelevant) our scientific theories are much more likely, in the long run, to come to accurately represent reality."

This is hardly objective. Nor can it be described as a "reasoned argument". It clearly and unequivocally states that their conclusions only have relevance if you assume the Answer, before you ask the Question.

While we are discussing objective evidence, Dan S de Merengue.

Here is a precis of Answers' "How can we see distant stars in a young universe?" exposition:

"The equations of [General Relativity] GR show that at the invisible boundary surrounding such a concentration of matter (called the event horizon, the point at which light rays trying to escape the enormous pull of gravity bend back on themselves), time literally stands still, as observed by a distant observer... Dr Humphreys’ new creationist cosmology ‘falls out’ of the equations of GR, so long as one assumes that the universe is bounded with a unique centre. In other words, that it has a centre and an edge... If the universe is not much bigger than we can observe, and if it was only 50 times smaller in the past than it is now, then scientific deduction based on GR means it has to have expanded out of a previous state in which it was surrounded by an event horizon... As matter passed out of this event horizon, according to Humphreys’ theory, the horizon itself had to shrink—eventually to nothing. Therefore at one point this horizon would have been touching the Earth. In that instant, time on the Earth (relative to a point far away from it) would have been virtually frozen. An observer on Earth would not in any way ‘feel different’. In principle ‘billions of years’ would be available for light to reach the Earth (in the frame of reference within which it is travelling in deep space), for stars to age, etc.—while less than an ordinary day passes on Earth."

Until Dr. Humphreys is able to address the assumptions required to reach this conclusion - eliminating, or at least providing some boundaries for, all those "ifs" - this cannot in any way be described as objective evidence.

If my aunt had etc...

And you did allow, did you not, that:

>>If they're not applying themselves to the objective evidence, then you're welcome to say which part of it.<<

This bit.

Even non-atheists (or more precisely non-Young Earth Creationist Christians) have issues with Dr. Humphreys...

http://www.reasons.org/articles/the-unraveling-of-starlight-and-time
http://www.reasons.org/articles/comments-on-the-rate-project

and scientists, with his cosmology, claims of comet ages, helium diffusion and radioisotopes and the age of the earth:

http://paleo.cc/ce/humphrey.htm
http://www.nmsr.org/humphrey.htm

We may have been too direct for Dan, WmTrevor.

I suspect he is in hibernation again.

Which would be a pity since I wanted to hear his comments about this on page 64 of 'Answers':

"After all, if we can’t trust the first chapter of Genesis to mean what it so plainly says, why should we trust the rest of the Bible? ... Or if we should ‘reinterpret’ Genesis to fit secular science, why not do the same with the other miracles, and the passages that offend secular morality?"

Mostly I don't understand why the first chapter (amongst others) can't be regarded as metaphorical in structure which then 'magically' makes most of the need for scientific conflation instantly disappear.

Those then interested in pursuing the godliness stuff can do so less impeded -- or conflicted.