I agree but that is not the Young Earth Creationism we are talking about. YEC is a specific fundamentalist christian construct. YECers would dismiss the aboriginal stories as myth and folklore. Only their biblical story can be the true story in their eyes.
Abrahamic religions
aren't the only ones who've held young-Earth beliefs - or close enough.
Most religions never attempted to actually
date the beginning, so far as I can tell. Even Genesis only did so indirectly through its massive genealogies - without them, the Genesis account would be yet another creation myth with an undefined "in the beginning."
Seriously, just look at the list on
Wiki.
"In the beginning, (deity x) did
and this was the Earth. Then (deity x) did (something else, or the same thing again) and this was the water." etc.
Some have the Earth begin "formless and void." In others, the Earth is already there, and the deity only "creates" life.
But the fact is, "creationist" beliefs do not solely stem from the Bible. Clearly, it is possible to conclude that the Earth is thousands of years old and was divinely Created without the Bible.
But all creation myths rely on ignorance. They're based on making the most rudimentary observations about the world, and using imagination to fill in the gaps. The sun appears to move, so obviously the sun orbits the Earth, for example. The sun is bright and yellow, like polished gold...the sun must be the pure, perfectly polished gold wheel of Apollo's chariot!
The common thread to Creationist beliefs of all flavors is ignorance, and of mistakenly raising up the speculations of ancient ancestors as absolutely true regardless of what modern technology allows us to discover. The Bible is simply the most commonly used source of ignorant mythology in the modern world; it doesn't have a patent on denial of reality.
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