The Bible says the earth is flat and can't move; and that pi is 3. It's also full of figurative language, similes, parables and allegories. There's often two different accounts of the same event, such as creation and the flood. So I don't understand why people try to interpret it literally.
Even so, Ken Ham's "young earth creationism" isn't the only "literal interpretation" of the age of the universe based on the Bible. There's also old earth creationism, gap creationism, progressive creationism, etc. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Earth_creationists
Yet these attempts to make the Bible compatible with physics fall short of the thirteenth century kabbalist Yitzhak ben Shmuel d'min Akko's fascinating Biblical deduction that the earth is 15 billion years old:
1. Sefer HaTemunah says it is the 6th 7,000-year sabbatical cycle. Since the sabbatical cycles existed before Adam, they must be measured in Divine years, not earth years. So, the universe is 6 x 7,000 = 42,000 Divine years old.
2. According to Psalm 90:4, a Divine day is 1,000 earth years long. So, a Divine year is 365,250 earth years.
3. Therefore, the universe is 42,000 Divine years x 365,250 earth years / Divine years = 15.3 billion earth years old.
And that's a lot closer to what the Big Bang Theory says than Ken Ham's 6,000 years.
