Creation and the age of the earth are very important if people are evangelizing. One question that always comes up is a question to do with science and the Bible. It goes like this, "What do you think of the conflict between the age of the earth in science, being 4.5 billion years when the Bible says it is more like 6000 years? They both can't be right"
How will you answer if you think it isn't important? Or if you've never thought about it.
Before I was saved, some Catholic people gave me magazine with a mail in book store where you could buy Catholic snd other Christian books. I knew Catholicism wasn't right with its priests and masses. But I did get some interesting books in creation. One was by Henry Morris, the other was a well documented book on the history of evolution replacing creation, especially in the universities. It put a lot of doubt into my unsaved mind. I had never liked evolution, it just seemed wrong. And all those silly text books with hunched over apes gradually turning into upright men seemed fake, but everyone but me seemed to believe it.
By the time I went back to university at 26, I had big doubts. I wanted to do environmental studies, and did a lot of physical geography, geology, biogeography and biology. In biology, I learned the plants were dated by the rocks. In geology I learned the rocks were dated by the plants. There were many other contradictions, and I began to believe in creation. But I didn't believe in the God who created it!
That year I met my future husband who was a closet Christian. Oh, he had repented and changed his life. He was also very kind, different than the average secular person. He decided to make friends with me, in order to share the gospel. Which he did, more and more. He told me about Old Testament people like David, who sinned, but God didn't lose him out of his hand. David repented, but left a sad legacy. Then we talked about creation, and he had the same idea as Oyster, that God created the earth, Adam and Eve as mature adults, not babies. I told him all the contradictions between different sciences I had learned in my secular university classes.
Then, God saved me! It was so amazing. I knew I needed to repent of the life I had been leading, so I did! Not perfect, but certainly major changes, with a lot of help from the Holy Spirit who came into my heart and life the moment I was saved.
So before I was saved, God removed a major stumbling block. The fact is, if science is correct about a long age earth, then the Bible is wrong! And if the first and opening chapters are wrong, how can I believe the rest of it? Are they just stories and lies, too?
God told me he was the Saviour of the world, and that the Bible is true, and I could trust it and that means Genesis chapters 1-3.
Some people may disagree, because they have a world view that is not Biblical! Since God saved me, 40 years ago, I have never found anything that contradicts the creation account.
When people deny the Bible creation account, or make up things like the "Gap" account, it makes the Bible look childish and written by people with little knowledge of the truth. The Bible has to be completely true. Or Christ might not have died in the cross, the perfect sacrifice for our sins, and then risen from the dead.