SecretMethod70

Thank you. If I may get side-tracked for a moment of speculation, I suspect that the fundamentalist interpretation stems from how easily accessible the written bible is today. Not that easy access to the bible is a bad thing - quite the contrary - but having a physical book, with the text written in stone such that it is, makes it very easy to consider it the end-all and be-all, even when concerning metaphorical stories which run contrary to modern knowledge. This is the best explanation I can come up with for why literal interpretations are so vehemently defended today when metaphorical interpretations have been prevalent for such a long time.
Again, an important point. I've mentioned the concept of "two books" before in Tilted Philosophy - that is, that the divine is revealed through nature just as much as it can be revealed through scripture, and thus, the "book of nature" must necessarily not contradict how we read scripture. When there is a contradiction, one is being misunderstood. Increasingly, as science progresses, that misunderstanding falls on our reading of scripture rather than our understanding of nature. Another way to look at it is that nature's primary revelation is of god the creator, whereas scripture's primary revelation is of god the redeemer. We wouldn't expect nature to tell us how god redeems, and we shouldn't expect scripture to reveal to us how god creates.
You are right to point out that our current best guesses are not necessarily exactly correct. In fact, very very very few things in science are ever considered to be exactly correct, and scientists are pretty careful to acknowledge this fact. However, we're a lot more sure than you let on in the above statement. We're not talking about a range of 3-6 billion years old for the age of the earth. The range science has determined for the age of the earth - with a good degree of confidence - is between 4.467 and 4.667 billion years. While not exact, that's pretty damn precise.

As has been touched upon already, there is a significant problem with the "god day = ? man years" argument for biblical interpretation (which, to fit in with modern scientific knowledge, would be written as "1 god day = 1.64 billion man years" if we're to use the lower limit estimation for the age of the universe, which is ~11.5 billion years)...

For one, the order of creation is incorrect. Reading the account, it works under the assumption that the Earth already exists within the void of space on day 1 (there can't be a day or night without a planet's horizon for a star to rise and set over). Then we get to the second day, which has already been dealt with: where'd the dome of water go? On the third day, vegetation was created. Interesting since a large number of plants rely on insects for pollination, and living creatures do not exist yet. If a day = 1.64 billion years, those plants would have died out rather quickly. Then we get to the fourth day - and my favorite. Apparently, the earth was created *before* it had a star to orbit around. An amusing concept since planets are created from debris caught in the gravitation pull of stars. I don't think I need to continue.

Secondly, there's the issue of the timeline itself. Setting aside the fact the order of creation makes no sense, neither do the intervals. Using the 11.5 billion year old universe and 1 day = 1.64 billion years concept, here's what a more accurate telling would look like (to see a relatively accurate timeline of creation for yourself, click here. Warning: it is a very large image.):

Day 1 - The universe is created
Day 2 - God rested
Day 3 - God rested
Day 4 - The sun is created
Day 5 - The earth is created, as is the first life in single-celled organisms
Day 6 - The moon is created
Day 7 - This is God's busy day. He procrastinated the whole week and now only has a day to finish his project! So, he stays up the whole time and works hard. He creates plants and insects. He creates and destroys the dinosaurs in about 3.5 god hours, all so we can have pretty fossils to look at. He then starts working on the rise of mammalian creatures, barely finishing his project of creation in time by creating the first humans at 11:59:52pm

As you can see, it's quite a bit of a stretch to say that the "1 god day = ? man years" concept allows the biblical creation story and what we know through science to "coexist almost peacefully."

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