[ScottyS]

One more thing to think about at a purely logical level: if God is able to create all of the things that we can observe about the universe, including the dimensions of space and time, it stands to reason that He is not limited in any way by the laws of physics that we have identified and categorized to date, as He would be the origin of all such frameworks. There are all sorts of implications there, starting with the fact that the Earth could have been created in some long, drawn-out manner as our current observational knowledge indicates, or in a literal 144hrs, in whichever manner God saw fit. This view actually makes the most sense from a purely scientific perspective - the idea that there is some god floating around out there that is somehow constrained by the laws of physics (like the gods of many mythologies) makes little sense. The God of the Bible is certainly not constrained by anything that we have the ability to observe or describe.

I would also say that there is a difference between arguing "literal" interpretation of the actual grammar/language used in some translation, and a "literal" interpretation of the idea/fact/concept described, after weighing against similar texts elsewhere in the Bible and original language. Interestingly enough, the focus of most people that attack the idea that the Bible is the inspired and without contradiction is typically on linguistic minutia and other similar items that real scholarship would immediately clarify. You never see an objective look at the remarkable consistency and persistence of a document that spans multiple millennia, several civilizations, dozens of writers, and all of the linguistic and grammatical issues that go along with that.

The reason I'm not getting involved in the argument is that there is always too much preconception going on, which clouds the issue.