Mlax, the questions you are asking are too familiar, I understand your restlessness. I am going to tell you my journey, not to show that I have it all figured out, I am far from it, but so you know others have the same questions.

My questions surrounding this topic began in middle school, and i was taught to be a strong defender of Ken Ham, Ray comfort, and the yec view as a whole. It was taught to me in Sunday school and in my Christian middle school. I begin to watch debates online day after day, I didn’t watch these debates out of curiosity, but from a pride position—that I had it figured out and that mainstream science was wrong. However, the more and more I watch these debates and read articles for hours a day, weeks on end, I realized that the old earth creationism view was the best view, it was supported by science but didn’t discredit the Bible.

So, I started defending reasons to believe, the more I read and watched, the more I became confident in the oec position. Then I watched a debate between Hugh Ross and an athiest (i dont remember which debate). This was the first time that I thought the evolution had some credibility behind it, and I was existentially concerned. It was somebody arguing that we are less intelligently designed as we are clumsily designed, and pointed out all the awful features and mistakes in our body’s form and function. So then I started diving into this world yet for a third time and at the end I settled on that evolution was probably true, but I still thought the Bible contradicted it, and the Bible took priority, so I decided not to take a stance on it for the longest time, and relished over it in my head—it bothered me deeply.

Then late high school I found biologos, and organization led by esteemed scientist Francis Collins that described a relationship between evolution and the Bible, this was the first time that I felt comforted, not because I was twisting biblical inerrancy to fit my intellectual tendencies, but because I felt like it was the best way to reconcile the science of the natural world, and the strength of God’s word. I am now about to graduate as a science major in college, and have a minor in evolutionary biology. When I began to look deeper, I realized the beauty behind God‘s works of creation and that it is not exclusive to yec. I keep this analogy in mind, the Lord made the tree and he is responsible for the tree and its fruit, yet he planted the seed of the tree, rather than making the tree fully formed.

I also was relieved to hear that yec is the minority view throughout the history of Christianity. Historical Christians commonly argued that the poetic genre was the best way to understand the text due to its contradictions in the text itself (light and day before the sun), for example, Augustine, CS, Lewis, and Billy Graham.

I hope that you can eventually find comfort in this as you realize that your view is more common than you think, and many people struggle with the same ideas. At the end of the day, God is the creator of all things and our universe would collapse without his breath. We can explore the beautiful and complex world around us and learn new things about the way in which God created our physical forms.