Genesis: is it to be taken literally?

Hovind says a lot of things. Assume for a sake of argument that he is an ignorant clown - why would a professor want to debate him ? Moreover Hovind insists on spoken debates where rhetorical effectiveness is at a premium - he refuses written debates where factual errors are harder to cover up. Hovind's refusal of written debate is the more significant point - it shows that even he knows that his skill as a speaker is his best hope of winning and that he is very likely to lose on the facts.Now consider Hovind's claims about angular momentum. Why would the orbits of the planets be based on the supposed spin of the pre-Big Bang singularity ? Why would it not be based on the way that the solar system itself formed ?
(If you want to actually provide a serious answer please provided a referenced, scientific, estimate of the supposed spin and an explanation of why it should still completely dominate the movement of all matter after a period of around 9 billion years)

I'm not a scientist either. But there is plenty of information available in popular books. Relying on a single source is never a good idea - especially when there are books are written by working scientists or people with actual experience working in science.

The day/night cycle is set up in Genesis 1:3-5, so there is no problem of how long a day is.

I've not seen any other literal interpretation that adequately explains why the light would be separated from the dark (or need to be separated). And when the light is explicitly named day and the dark night the matter seems quite settled.(And regardless of whether the literal story is the real message it is still very much present).