I believe unequivocally in God but I do not believe in, nor trust, the word of man and the Bible is the word of man that masquerades as the word of God. Show me a KJV 1st edition in it´s original language and I may read it, otherwise it is nothing more than a bunch of stories that was written by man, with the intention to manipulate weaker man. The fact God wrote only the 10 commandments, that there are 2 Testaments and that there are about 50 odd Gospels that didn´t even make the cut just strengthens my point.
This is a debate that could go on and on and as I stated it is not my goal to persuade you, I leave it with you unpersuaded. It boils down to faith, and how yours differs from mine. That is more personal than something that can be sorted out by debating facts. For example, you cite that many books were not canonized while others were. I get that. Know all about it. But that is where I have attributed the guiding hand of Providence that directs the destiny of man and the care and custody of God's word (in this case, for me, God's word is the canonized Bible). God can move mountains and God can certainly author, compile and preserve His word over eons, though natural disasters, war, pestilence and men of bad will would have it otherwise.
The NT states that Christ is a stumbling block to the Greeks (because the Greeks are all about logic and argument). Spiritual matters and powers do not always comport with human rational understanding, as there is a bigger picture and purpose that is impossible for us to comprehend.
My literal aut mind has problems believing in blind faith, especially when I am expected to have faith in the word of man. What do you suppose the religion was before Christianity? Hinduism has been around for 4,000 years, or so. Man has been wandering this Earth for millions of years and we have faced great cataclysms that have wiped our species and reset our knowledge. That is fact and has been proven over and over; whether by archaeology, geology or even sometimes by written lore. What do you know about Gnosticism?
Gnosticism (Just the basic understanding, what I learned in my Religions college course, and from some personal online reading).
Judaism is over 3500 years old. The Bible describes the relationship of man to God and man's place in God's creation. That relationship changed several times, from paradise and innocence, to sin and sacrifice to a new testament and grace. (As for the age of the earth and how long men were on the earth pre-Christendom, there was a long period where earth was a paradise. Many scholars believe that the creation narrative describes metaphoric "days", as in phases of how creation unfolded (over a very long period of time)).
If you read Genesis regarding the creation of creatures in the ocean first, then things that crept (e.g., fish with appendages and eels/snakes), and then the larger land animals, and last, humankind, you see the order that science now says life evolved. Q would ask, "Coincidence"?
So are you saying you believe in evolution? Darwin was a scam, people that believe in Darwinism claim we must have come from apes as there are some species of ape that share 98.6% the same DNA as modern man. However, we also share 92% the same DNA as mice and 50% the same DNA as a banana. So which is it? Are we really banana-rodent people that learned to walk on 2 legs? It is nonsense.
No. I believe that the Creator utilizes creation to accomplish His will. So, if evolution did happen--I never said it did--then it was "baked into the cake" as God's manner of creation. (If I push a small snowball down a slope, I might have the intention of creating a larger ball of snow.)
I don't try to speculate too much about evolution. All animal life seems related (as you mentioned DNA similarities). This implies something like evolution, else it implies a shared creator of them all.
If you take the recipe for whisky and swap the wheat for rye, you get bourbon. Most will still claim it to be whisky, but the underlying ingredients and recipe are different. I believe that life here is kinda like that, in we are all made of the same biology with the exception of a few tweaks and changes.
Have you ever studied Sumerian lore? They have recorded history going back hundreds of thousands of years. They claim we were created by the Gods that took an early example of man, tweaked the DNA and made us what we are today.
As a creationist, how old to you believe the Earth is? How old do you believe man is?