Conclusions?
Young Earth - must accept appearance of maturity as non-deceptive, assume something like white hole cosmology to explain distant starlight, supernova, background radiation, redshift
Old Earth creationist - must live with serious theological difficulties
Old Earth non-theist - must ignore the appearance of design in nature, and live with the lack of good answers for the formation of life and mechanisms of macro-evolution
Notes:
None of the three listed views regarding the age of the Earth and the universe (young Earth creationist, old Earth creationist, old Earth non-theist) seem to be fully satisfactorily explained if both current scientific understanding and fundamental Biblical claims are both highly regarded.
The old Earth non-theist view that nature is "all there is" (known as the philosophy of "naturalism") has many basic scientific problems, such as how the materials of the universe came into existence, what caused physical laws such as gravity to come about, how the structures of the universe were formed, how life started from non-life, how primitive life could transform itself unaided into higher forms, and the fact that this progression from simple to complex appears to go against the most fundamental of scientific laws, the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
The old Earth creationist view is really very close to the non-theist view. The only real difference is that God is invoked as an explanation for situations where all other scientific possibilities are exhausted (such as for the key problems just listed). In addition to having these scientific problems, this view adds tremendous theological difficulties, making it possibly the worst option.
The young Earth creationist view does not have all problems solved, but seems to offer the best hope that future research will provide a more fully satisfying integration of both the scientific and Biblical arenas. Focus on the importance of Noah's flood and its effects on the Earth as an explanatory mechanism will likely be a key in future creationist theories regarding dating techniques, along with further development of cosmological theories, possibly along the lines of the Humphreys theory.