You might dig into the details proposed by day age theorists (Hugh Ross, and his www.reasons.org website, is one, that I don’t completely agree with, but answers a lot of these issues). For example if the earth from the observer’s point of view was constantly cloudy, green plants would be possible without being able to see the sun. Miracles are also possible in the midst of a more or less evolutionary process. Humans being a special creation from scratch does not tell us whether all other life forms were special creations too.
Genesis says He created the Sun on Day Four, not that it was seen then. Besides, I can’t imagine any evidence evolutionists, astronomers and cosmologists have come up with which would make the idea of a planet growing without a sun for millions of years remotely reasonable without God specifically acting to make the planet warm. So we’re rejecting the idea that God created the Earth and its biosphere in six days as a special creation for the equally “unscientific” and supernatural idea that God kept the Earth habitable for millions of years without a star to provide light and heat.
The idea of evolution among animals occurring without any predators or scavengers arising before the advent of man not only makes no sense in terms of how natural selection works, it conflicts with the fossil record in the same way that “Elvis Presley can’t sing” conflicts with his vinyl records. The idea that T-Rex evolved from the slime over hundreds of millions of years to eat grass is just as absurd as any picture of Jesus riding an apatosaurus.
And again, unless women evolved a million years or so after men, day-age is impossible.
You say that “Miracles are also possible in the midst of a more or less evolutionary process,” but then we’re left with more problems:
a. If evolution needed miracles to succeed, when did the miracles stop, or did they? Should evolutionary biologists still be looking for them today?
b. How shall scientists document and study these miraculous events?
c. If the evolution of the planet and its biosphere happened in the order that is documented in Genesis, how have evolutionary scientists screwed the timeline up so badly?
d. If they have, why should we believe they are really, really on the ball about how the natural world works except for that whole plants-before-the-sun-and-birds-before-dinosaurs thing?
e. If they haven’t, and evolution really did happen under God’s supervision, hy couldn’t God do a better job of documenting it than handing us an account that is 3 days (billions of years, presumably) off on the Sun and has birds cruising the sky before T-Rex existed?
Genesis doesn’t work as an allegory of sin, a pretty poem God wrote to make us feel good or a day-age kinda-sorta account of evolution. It is either history or a fairy tale.
You may need to pop more popcorn. See 233 and following.