Dawkins and most others here are missing the primary issue: evidence. What qualifies as [evidence](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence) for scientific purposes is limited. It excludes (or minimizes) evidence the human beings accept in most other areas. You would no more cite your neighbor's belief in the shape of the earth for a scientific paper than cite the number of flowers you bought your wife as proof that you love her. There are many reasons people believe Bible accounts for rational reasons outside of scientific evidence.

Also implicit in most of the posts here and Dawkin's piece is to assume there is zero scientific evidence for a young earth or any other Biblical story. As Feynman was fond of saying, it isn't up to science to determine truth all the time, but rather what is more or less likely based on what we currently know. It is most likely our universe is X years old based on what we know now, but even those ages have changed by wide margins in the last century. We don't know how much more it will change in the next century. But we are as sure about the current age as astronomers were 100 years ago.

For the record, based on our present scientific knowledge, it is more likely our earth is 4.5 billions years old than 5000. But we don't know for sure, do we?