I am also interested in another question that literal six day creation brings up. If the earth, the universe and all life on it could not possibly have been created over an extended period of time, but rather all at once, why does the Bible say that it actually did occur over an extended time, rather than all at once? After all, six days and 15 billion years are both extended times, only differing in degree. Why didn't God just create everything without ANY time passing? Why did He create everything in six days and in stages when He could obviously have just spoken the word and everything would have immediately been created? Through an understanding of relativity and big bang cosmology, it's possible to give at least one answer to this question. Relativity tells us that in a reference frame with a large gravitational field, time passes more slowly. That is if two observers measure the duration of an event, observer A who is in a high gravitational field will measure a shorter time than observer B who is in a low gravitational field. Big bang cosmology (combined with conservation of mass-energy) tells us that the entire mass/energy content of the universe was initially present in a very tiny volume of space. This would lead to enormous gravitational fields. Perhaps God, as an observer in this high gravitational field reference frame of the early universe, measured a duration of six days for creation whereas we in our low gravitational field reference frame measure this duration as 10-15 billion years.
Very interesting hypothesis.
It always struck me that some people try and limit God by saying he couldn't do this or that due to some law of physics.
My answer to that is that if God created the laws of physics, He could just as easily change them to suit his purpose whenever He wants.
One other thing (not to get off point) is that in the literal six day creation, you'll notice that God first created the plants and life BEFORE he created the sun and moon (In Genesis it is called the greater and lesser light, and were made on the ?? third or fourth day I think).
According to our known laws of physics, the sunlight would be required to sustain plant life, would it not?