Part of the age issue is theological, which I don't think has attracted much attention.
Some thoughts:
Ancient (pagan
-- or 'mimetic' and idealistic -- or exilic, such as Hinduism -- using
Westphal's taxonomy) views of the age of the cosmos were of long ages (
far longer than modern), eternal existence or unquantified into myth.
They all tended to dehistoricize the origin stories or myths (often
accompanied by ludicrous and irrational causality and calling upon
fantastical creatures -- perhaps related to pre-flood denizens?). That
is, outside the flow of time we are in and thus unreachable by and
uncontactable by us.
It is the 'uncontactable'
that is important: they all thus tend to or actually de-personalize the
creation event(s) and place the creating force at inaccessible remove
from our life-world and historical flow. The 'gods' are incommunicado,
remote, and uninterested in the creature, except as fodder or slaves, it
would seem
All of this serves to strand
humanity in an impersonal cosmos with the only possible 'integration
point' being, at best, fickle exploitative forces indifferent to man's
good and often inimical to it. At worst enabling man's depravity,
cruelty and assertion of determinative moral opinions
Modern
materialist 'long ages' touted as accommodating Evolutionary processes,
but in fact far too short for NDE to produce the current biota, are in
this league. As against the Genesis account (which extends across
Genesis 1-3, IMO) which places man for fellowship with God in the same
time-space and historical flow that the stage of fellowship was created.
In
this account God is communicatively with us and ontologically and
actually present and active directly and personally in our time-space
world, which he spoke (speaking the first gesture of fellowship) into
existence. The creation is thus both historicized and personalized. It
echos the love with which the Creator worked.
Furthermore,
it grounds in what is truly real our epistemology, our ontology and our
axiology, all in the God who is and who speaks, finally in his Messiah
where the '2nd person of the godhead' takes on human form as the
inheritor of the creation. The grounding is in our time-space shown in
God's action in the days that we exist in without denigrating but rather
exulting in them .They define the domain of his creatures who would
reflect his image in his creation for them, in a resonant responsive
relational congress.
So, modern 'long ages'
push God's creative acts out of our sphere of action and history to
de-couple the creation from our 'life-world' and intruding an
existential barrier of an incomprehensible past unreflective of the
warmth and care of the creation events. They make any interaction with
God of dubious historical weight. This possibly invites back the Platonism which has dogged theology for too long and makes God
personally differently from his revelation of self in Genesis 1-3. It
detaches Messiah from the continuity of care (love) demonstrated in that
account and fantasizes the New Creation, when the NT has it the
palpable consummation of the Kingdom of Christ.
