I apologize if my posts steered it in that direction. nmh made two posts concerning the Hebrew text of Genesis which were factually incorrect, and I didn't want to leave them stand unchallenged.
YEC advocates fail to acknowledge that figurative interpretations of Genesis go back at least two millennia. The notion that Genesis has always been understood literally is simply incorrect. As I noted above, the Zohar reckons the age of the universe at a little over 15 billion years.
One last note. Maimonides denounced mindless literalism, and held that, in the event of a conflict between the findings of natural philosophy and the interpretation of scripture, the failure lies in our understanding of scripture, and we must modify our interpretations of scripture to accord with observable reality.
I'm not familiar with Maimonides. Sounds like a very sensible fellow. A quick Google indicates that he died more than 4 centuries before Galileo's heresy conviction. That opinion of literalism was also the view of Galileo (for all the good it did him) and it is currently the belief of the Catholic Church -- although it obviously wasn't when the Church persecuted Galileo:
Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina of Tuscany. Galileo's opinion about science/scripture conflicts.
The Pope's 1996 statement on evolution. Physical evolution is not in conflict with Christianity. Excerpts:
For my part, when I received those taking part in your Academy's plenary assembly on 31 October 1992, I had the opportunity, with regard to Galileo, to draw attention to the need of a rigorous hermeneutic for the correct interpretation of the inspired word. It is necessary to determine the proper sense of Scripture, while avoiding any unwarranted interpretations that make it say what it does not intend to say. In order to delineate the field of their own study, the exegete and the theologian must keep informed about the results achieved by the natural sciences.Today, almost half a century after the publication of the Encyclical [Pope Pius XII's 1950 Encyclical, Humani Generis], fresh knowledge has led to the recognition that evolution is more than a hypothesis. It is indeed remarkable that this theory has been progressively accepted by researchers, following a series of discoveries in various fields of knowledge. The convergence, neither sought nor fabricated, of the results of work that was conducted independently is in itself a significant argument in favour of this theory.