Well said! I enjoyed your essay tremendously. Following is the theory that I believe best expains how dinosaurs, fossils and fossil fuels do not really conflict with a literal "7-day" creation account.
It is called the "Gap Theory". The first verse of Genesis begins: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." He created, but when he did the creating, it does not say. Perhaps eons ago. Prehistoric creatures were put here to walk the earth. They left a lot of fossil remains as they died out from natural causes, perhaps a meteor. The Bible goes on in verse 2 to say: "The earth was formless and void and darkness was over the surface of the waters."
I have read that the Hebrew word for "void" suggested something that once was and then was really messed up. Perhaps the war that the Bible later mentions between the angels of heaven where one-third of the angels follows Satan and gets kicked out of heaven, really messed up the earth, made it "void" and dark.
Now God looks upon the earth again and says in verse three: "Let there be light".... there already was a sun and moon, created eons before, He just lifted the darkness surrounding the messed up earth and let the sun once more shine upon the earth, and began the literal seven days of the new creation of earth in which he would this time instead of dinosaures put other creatures and man upon the earth.
It is a plausable explianation that allows responsible science to coincide with the Bible. I do not believe Darwin's theory to be "responsible" science as there are too many descrepancies (the main one being the odds on amino acids just by chance forming into complex "life" are just too great to believe that happened by chance. The Bible has no contradictions.... only misunderstandings of men reading into it more than is there. The Bible has mysteries that are not readily clear because this helps to separate the believers from the non-believers. The believers take the Bible first on FAITH..... then one by one the mysteries begin to become clear as the Holy Spirit reveals them to us. My interpretation is only a theory and like yousaid... we will one day find out the real truth. Until then I can only say, I firmly believe that we must take the Bible as the Word of God and literally true and know that there is an answer that fits with what we know to be true in science with no condidictions eventhough we maybe cannot yet see it.