There are well-meaning people who are really hurting Christianity when they pose things as either you accept a certain Fundamentalist reading of the Bible or you are an atheist or at least a liberal. Actually, some of the original Fundamentalists did not have a problem with the idea of an ancient universe. The insistence on 6000 years being a litmus test of orthodoxy is something fairly recent.
“...some of the original Fundamentalists did not have a problem with the idea of an ancient universe.”
care to name a couple?
I don’t have time now, but would like to look into this.