That doesn't help with the direction from my Seventh-day Adventist teachers that I should ignore empirical evidence. They specifically taught that any evidence

That doesn't help with the direction from my Seventh-day Adventist teachers that I should ignore empirical evidence. They specifically taught that any evidence found which would falsify their calculated age of the Earth should be ignored. Yes, one can be a creationist and choose to believe that God created the universe with a big bang. But some creationists literally believe that the Earth was created in six days.