I will hit the high points here. To go into a real deep discussion would require several posts and lose everyone.
POINT ONE: There are actually two creation stories in the Bible.
There are two Biblical stories of creation in Genesis. The Six Day Creation story and the Adam and Eve story. They come from different Hebrew traditions and when the Torah was canonized and standardized, both stories were included in what we now know as the Torah. One story came from the southern tribes and the other story came from the northern tribes of Hebrews. I don't remember now which. I studied this years ago.
Both stories were there for a purpose. The Creation story's purpose was to tell that God created things in an orderly way. He rested on the seventh which means that the next week God was back to creating. The Creation Story was quite bold at the time as the Hebrews were requiring even the slaves to have one day of rest per week, a concept unheard of in ancient times.
The Adam and Eve story has a point too, in it. God is perfect and created people perfect and capable of having a complete relationship with God and it is people who choose to break that relationship and the rest of the Bible are stories about God reaching down to restore that relationship and man looking to God to restore that relationship. And in the end, in Revelation, the last book in the Bible, God wins beating out the devil and the world lives forever in perfect peace and the Creation is finally finished in full complete glory with streets of gold, no crying, no sorrows etc.
To get lost in literalism throughout the Bible is to completely lose out on the meaning of this fantastic story. As a epic, written by who knows how many authors, it is a best seller. Parts of it are x-rated. Man understands God as perfect. Man understands God as being a complete asshole at times. Man understands some things to be evil in some places and in other places those same things are noble. But it is always written from man's point of view as it is man that is writing it.
Studied as an epic like the ancient Greek epics, much more is understood about man and his relationship to a God that this particular group of people believed to be real. Even for atheists who read it as an epic, it tells so much about human behavior and relationships. It truly is a remarkable book.
I will digress for a moment to say though that the literalists cheapen the book. They take away the tension throughout the story. Basically they destroy the historical perspective. To get a real understanding of the culture of that day and how people came to believe what they did and why, the Bible can give great insights to living to both the religious and the non religious.
POINT TWO: The breakdown of the actual story and what the story really says to non-literalists.
I will quote from a modern text, "The International Version" and provide editorial comment.
Genesis 1:1-2 "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters."
The first sentence is a simple statement that God created the heavens and the earth. When the next few verses are read and I will point that out as we go along, it is obvious to me that the creation of the heavens and the earth happened BEFORE the six day Creation story. The Creation story is dealing with the development of the earth which as the story goes along is in almost the exact order that science has the development of the earth from its infancy.
Summation of this paragraph: The universe was here billions or trillions, who knows, before this creation story of the development of the earth begins.
Genesis 1:3-5 "And God said, "Let there be light." and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light "day' and the darkness he called "night" And there was evening, and there was morning - the first day."
When the solar system developed earth formed as a planet and began the orbit and revolution cycles. I don't think there is a scientist who would disagree that this was a very early on development in earth history. But that word "day" It is the same Hebrew word that means a period of time. The Bible later says that a thousand earth days are like one day to God. On this first "day" there wasn't really an earth as we know it so....how long is a day? To non literalists a day is a period of time. Each day in the creation story could have been billions of years. And the "days" didn't have to have equal value in earth time.
I will stop here for now. I will continue the non literalists view point of creation later as we get this digested.
Conclusion of this post:
One:The creation stories have a purpose showing the order of creation and to tell the ancient Hebrews that God had a hand in the creation.
Two: The set up for what was then the revolutionary concept that people should have one day of rest for each week.
Three: The Bible can be interpreted to say that "days" are not 24 hour periods of time.
Four: Literalists take away from the meaning of the Bible, not add power to the Bible as they believe they are doing. Literalism makes the Bible become shallow. Non literalism gives life and depth to the story of man and his understood relationship to a God that man believes exists.