You can't take the Creation narrative literally. It was most likely written by Moses, who's purpose was NOT to take down scientific FACT, but to present the creation story, as he understood it, using common literary styles of his time so that normal people could understand.
I took a class last year that was devoted to showing us how stories that are wide open to criticism (like Creation, Flood, Jericho, etc) are true in the ways that they needed to be true (purpose, message/meaning), not necessarily 100% chronological discriptions of events (that would be so boring anyway!).
Another place where the numbers don't make sense: the Flood narrative. First, the Bible says 7 of each animal, then just two. We learned that the Flood narrative in the Bible is probably a reinterpretation of the one in the Gilgamesh story (I think that's it). My history Prof. gave a few simple reasons for this. First, the original (if it truly is the original) Flood story has no moral theme like the Bible's does (God saved Noah's family because they were good people). Also, the "boat" structure in the first story is sort of square, while in the Bible, the boat is more boat shaped with very specific dimensions. It makes more sense to add a moral theme and specifics like dimensions and a boat that actually looks like a boat to the original than it does to remove a moral theme and make the boat square.
I think he's right; I think the Flood narrative in the Bible is NOT the original and the original is either the one of Gilgamesh, or another from which both of these were derived.
