I fully agree with you, metmom. In my life away from work, YEC versus OEC never comes up as an issue.
I know this doesn't surprise you because you're a strong Christian, but I'm still amazed at how many people want you to pray for them. Restaurant servers, people in hospital and nursing homes, people waiting in doctors' offices, even cashiers. When we see someone who looks troubled and offer to pray for them, they never turn us down. We pray for God to use us as witnesses, and he answers that prayer in great abundance.
On the other hand, my work life is quite different. All of my workers are very highly educated scientifically and are intellectually curious. I work with a few Christians, but not many.
Even though my co-workers know that I'm not a YEC Christian, the topic still comes up because they read news stories about teaching YEC in school (it's a hot topic in Texas) and they always point it out to me. the few who are the ardent atheists love to bring up the topic because they know how much YEC hurts the cause of Christ.
YEC is not something that I have to deal with on a daily basis at work, but it pops up at least every couple of weeks.
The extent to which YEC is an issue depends upon the type of people that you're around. I happen to work in a field where people are likely to talk about the issue and I've seen YEC become a stumbling block to becoming a Christian.
These folks are not atheists. They are anti-theists. They are not intellectually curious, rather they have an axe to grind, and they are looking for a fight.
Maybe you serve a different christ than Christians do, eh?
The bottom line to Schroeder (and me) is that YEC v OEC is a false dichotomy when we consider relativity and the inflationary theory. It is not an either/or.
Even though many are aware of General Relativity, they rarely finish the sentence: the universe is approximately fifteen billion years old from our space/time coordinates.
And conversely: the universe is approximately seven days old from the inception space/time coordinates.