The way I see it, anyone who interprets Genesis literally as factual, historical truth 1) doesn't have any sort of imagination, 2) doesn't understand the concept of an allegory and 3) isn't aware of the significance of storytelling, oral or written, in ancient cultures.

Now this isn't to say that everything in the Pentateuch is pure fiction. It is supposed to be the first part of the history of Israel. But the actual story of creation (Genesis 1:1 - 2:4) is somewhat of a separate thing. It's a relatively short account of what would seem like a very important event. I hardly need to touch on the obvious: no human was around to witness the events and write them down. Essentially this means that if we are to take this account as literal truth, then the writer (referred to only as 'J', the writer who used Yahweh/Jehovah as the divine name) had these events revealed to him through direct divine interaction, and this is something you either believe or don't believe, it can't be argued to any reasonable extent.

I am not sure where the timeline of a few thousand years came from, perhaps from the view that each day represents a thousand years. If anyone knows more about this aspect, I'd like to hear about it. Science has told us through carbon dating and other techniques that the earth itself is much older than a few thousand years. Rocks have been found on every continent that are thought to be more than 3.5 billion years old, and rocks gathered on the Apollo and Luna missions are gauged at 4.5 billion years old. I think this is the most concrete evidence because we have actual materials that we can measure. From here, we make conjectures and say the Milky Way is between 11 to 13 billion years old and the universe itself is between 10 and 15 billion years old.

Now the way I understand the Creationism model, and i don't know a whole lot about the specifics yet, is that is says microevolution, which we can observe and record over decades, does not extrapolate to macroevolution, which occurs over millions of years. It claims that everything is centered around a creation event, which is defined as the instantaneous appearance of new matter out of nothing including but not limited to, fully functional, completely developed organisms.

I don't know about this. I mean I know there has to be a First Cause, unless you want to say that the universe has always existed, which would make it eternal.....a very interesting theory but impossible to argue. As far as first causes go, I'm at a loss to go any further. It would seem that a Big Bang event is just as probable as a creation event in some respects. Of course the catch behind the creation event is that there is a deity causing it, whereas people are somewhat split over the Big Bang event being caused by something called God.

My general rule of thumb for dealing with dualities like this one is to try to combine the two options, or else look for a third option altogether. Any ideas?