Of course, I totally grant you that God could have created the Universe and Earth exactly whenever it is you think He did, and according to whatever interpretation you give the Bible's words.
But then we'd have to ask: why does scientific evidence tell us a very different version of events?
Why did God create the Earth to look as if it is billions of years old, with life descending through evolutionary processes from much simpler forms?
To me, these are not difficult questions and the answers are simple and obvious:
An Earth four billion years old, in a Universe 13 billion years old, holding a hundred billion galaxies, containing 10 sextillion stars plus unimaginable "dark matter" and "dark energy" and "dark whoknowswhat" is obviously intended to impress our scientists with how tiny & puny they are, compared to God's majesty and power.
God is obviously trying His best to keep us humble, often without success, but if we reduce the whole Universe to a matter of a mere few thousand years, then our importance in it seems to me grossly exaggerated beyond what God obviously intends.
God is telling our scientists that mankind's importance to the great Universe is zero, zip, nada -- except, except in accordance with our relationship to Him who created it.
Of course, that's just my opinion, your results may vary.
The greatest challenge to the intellect is whether or not one can begin to question his own most deeply held beliefs.
Ant the ability to suspend disbelief.
For the naturalist, this would mean taking a new, skeptical approach to things like whether there might be holes in the idea that natural selection and speciation are truly consistent with empirical reasoning.
And whether there might be any flaws in the premises needed to have total faith in the accuracy of radiometric dating.