My stepdad said something rather shocking to me the other day - he isn’t sold on the idea of a billions year old earth. He said “there are other ways to date stuff besides using geology” (he’s in a geological field by trade, so he took a lot of it back in the day…), and thinks more things point to the earth being about a couple hundred thousand years old instead.
Is this some weird YEC/OEC hybrid, or is he just listening to some especially bizarre people?
Is he retired? And if it isn’t too personal to ask about age … 50-60? 60-70? 70-80?
The only reason I ask is that it helps to know what “season of life” people are in when deciding how much to engage their points of view. I guess the fact that he’s made his opinion known to you means that he does desire engagement of that sort at least in some way! I’m in the 50-60 range myself and have already lost both my own parents. But as I get older and the prospect of me being on the other end of what you are talking about is becoming more real each year. I know that as long as I’m sound enough in mind to know any better, I would much prefer my children to “deal straight” with me and not patronize me by just nodding and smiling while I’m saying stupid stuff. If I had dementia and can’t really be engaged, that would be an entirely different thing. But it sounds like your dad is basically of sound mind. I would rather know what my kids actually thought of me and my ideas (I think!) than to feel shut out of their own very active thought lives. So without knowing any more about your situation, let me just say at the risk of temporarily rousing his ire, (and maybe you don’t really have much fun trying to open such a potentially involved conversation) - nonetheless some part of all that might be a gift to him in the end. In so many cases now, people are probably be happy just to be engaging with others (not to mention their grown, and very busy children!) over something.
My guess is the latter.
That’s weird. If the idea is to make it concord with biblical genealogies, then I don’t see why you’d go that far out and still consider it “within bounds.” But maybe it’s a baby step. It is a slippery slope, after all. 
I think a lot of people have a dual system of belief about it. One of my relatives in the discussion about the age of the earth actually said, “I think that they may both be true (old and young earth)” which is bizarre to me but many people function as though that is their belief. They believe in a literal young earth at church, but don’t blink when looking a dinosaur fossils millions of years old and accepting that age.
The strange thing to me is that he has had exposure to geology, which if he has really looked at it, precludes any kind of recent creation.
Haha he is of retirement age but still cranking out work.
I was mostly just surprised to hear this idea in general, and didn’t know if this was a common belief actually or if anyone knew of any proponents of this idea.
I agree. My guess is that he is probably still very traditional in terms of his views on human origins, and so he is trying to hold both in his hands, as you mentioned.
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