This whole discussion is fraught with complete and total bias on both sides of the argument. The fact is the bible speaks in generalizations of life, belief in God, and how to live our lives in order to please and praise God. In that, I believe in most of the bible but I also believe the words in the bible were never meant to be taken literally, in essence they believed in teaching by way of parables, which are not factual as much as they are life affirming.
Personally, I believe in what the bible teaches us, but I also believe in the science that we have developed- through God's hand and our development over the many millennia humans have inhabited this earth- even beyond the creatures that were here before us- and the nothingness that existed for many hundreds of thousands of years after the earth's forming. The Big Bang is just another example of our inability to understand huge cosmic events so we pretend we understand and continue to explore meaning by putting forth theories and the proving if they are right or wrong. Why do you think we have continued to explore space in more and more detail over the years? The one question I ask anyone who tries to explain away the beginning of the universe by saying it was the Big Bang is this- "where did the material for the Big Bang come from? No matter how small or large the central core of the Big Bang was at the beginning, it had to come from somewhere."
I believe God was involved in the creation of this universe but He works in ways we may never understand and in a time frame we aren't able to understand. The universe may be 14 billion years old, or much older- we don't have enough understanding to completely judge these things yet. But as a working theory it makes sense according to what evidence we have accumulated at the moment. To discount the speed of light, carbon dating, and scientific theories that try to explain these things out of hand because of your total belief in the bible as a scientific or historical reference is just plain being obtuse and argumentative. Close minded people have held back scientific discovery for most of recorded history. Look what happened to Galileo when he proposed the earth wasn't the center of the universe...
Amen
