When God saw all that He had made, from the seas to the skies to the heavens to mankind, He declared it all "very good". But if we take virtually any old earth philosophy seriously, there has never been a time in which this earth was "very good". Death has always been a feature not just of life, but even the continuation and improvement thereof. Horrible mutations like thorns, nasty diseases like cancer, undesirable habits like carnivory, if we take old earth philosophies seriously, which is a worrying trend in the Church, all of these things are "very good".
But Old Earthers think they have the answer: "very good" isn't the same as perfect, is it? But consider who we're talking about here. We're not talking about some 5 year old who happens to be able to draw a convincing butterfly. This is God. The same God whose Son said of Him "No one is good but One, that is, God." (Matthew 19:17).
Do you consider yourself to be a "good" person? Perhaps you do. Perhaps you're a model citizen. Perhaps you're even an upstanding citizen. You may be the most respectable person in your church, and yet according to God, you're not even good. Certainly not "very good". God's standard in every area is much higher than ours. Specifically, according to Deuteronomy 32:4, God sees His own work as perfect.
And so yes, when God says His world was "very good", that is synonymous with perfection. On top of that, He is just. There is no injustice with God, and yet old earth philosophies require thousands, if not millions of years of brutality. That isn't justice. The Bible calls death an enemy (1 Corinthians 15:26), in which God Himself takes no pleasure (Ezekiel 18:32; 33:11). It is a result of sin (1 Corinthians 15:21), not the process by which sinful man evolved.
Of all the beliefs about creation, only one is fully compatible with the loving, just, truthful God described in the Bible. Specifically, the belief about creation that comes from the Bible. You cannot have flawed perfection, and thus the flaws of Evolution are incompatible with God as Creator. Death before sin is as evil as imprisonment before crime, and so you cannot have a just God and an old earth. If God did do these horrible things, He did everything in His power to ensure His word drew us away from this conclusion. Therefore, we either do not serve a God who used Evolution, or we do not serve a God of truth. Any faithful Christian with a respect for the authority of God's written word must reject old earth philosophies.