"It not infrequently happens that something about the earth, about the sky, about other elements of this world, about the motion and rotation or even the magnitude and distances of the stars, about definite eclipses of the sun and moon, about the passage of years and seasons, about the nature of animals, of fruits, of stones, and of other such things, may be known with the greatest certainty by reasoning or by experience, even by one who is not a Christian. It is too disgraceful and ruinous, though, and greatly to be avoided, that he [the non-Christian] should hear a Christian speaking so idiotically on these matters, and as if in accord with Christian writings, that he might say that he could scarcely keep from laughing when he saw how totally in error they are. In view of this and in keeping it in mind constantly while dealing with the book of Genesis, I have, insofar as I was able, explained in detail and set forth for consideration the meanings of obscure passages, taking care not to affirm rashly some one meaning to the prejudice of another and perhaps better explanation."
St. Augustine, The Literal Interpretation of Genesis 1:19–20.
The Bible has been and continues to be confirmed by non ideologically driven science.
Creation ex nihilo, bacteriological based view of medicine, the vacuum of space, cataclysmic geology, the subatomic nature of matter, etc, etc, and etc. --- all are found in the Bible.
If Genesis is not literally true then you have no reason to trust that any of the Bible is literally true - including the resurrection.
If Genesis isn’t literally true then you have no basis for your faith.
(btw - nice to hear from you Claud.)
Add to Blessed Augustine’s insistence on the non-literal character of the narrative in Genesis, St. Gregory of Nyssa’s description of the first two chapters as “doctrine in the guise of a narrative”. Medieval Jewish commenators, notably Maimonides, also, without any impetus from a supposed contradiction with modern science, similarly discounted literal readings of anything beyond “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”
Even St. Basil the Great, whose Hexameron is aduced as a patristic support for a literal reading of Genesis says “it matters not whether you say day or aeon, the thought is the same.”
Biblical literalism hardly has the support of the consensus patrium, and seems to me to be as much a rationalistic phenomenon as the materialism it so often quarrels with.