How Old Are You?

I was watching a comedian the other day and he started making fun of creationists of the stripe that believe the earth was created in its present form by God 6000 or so years ago. It wasn't very funny, only chuckle-worthy.

I turned to the person watching beside me who I know is religious and I commented, "Probably not very funny to you at all, eh?"

They responded with "One day to us is not the same thing to God." That is to say, the bible could be correct in Genesis if one took a liberal meaning to the word "day". Were the six days actual days (i.e. 24 hours, one rotation of the earth on its axis) or were they metaphorical "days" (i.e. thousands, perhaps millions of years)?

If you go with the former, you have to face a lot of evidence that you are just plain wrong: geological, biological, astrophysicalogical... everything together points to either an earth that is millions or billions of years old or an earth that looks like it is millions or billions of years old.

But if you go with the latter (not ladder as Kim was so quick to point out a few posts ago) you have leeway around that evidence. It allows one to have faith that God did all the work without having to purposefully ignore or misconstrue mountains of evidence. To me this is the more logical approach even if I still disagree with it.

I wonder how many religious people fall into each category and which is the majority? I suspect the Young Earth Creationists but I don't know for sure.