Genesis: is it to be taken literally?

I take it literally and it does not say that the earth, sun, moon and stars nor the rest of the universe was created some 6000 years ago. Genesis 1:1 simply states that when the heavens and the earth were created, God did it. It goes on from there to state how God via the Holy Spirit organized the earth, created the sun, moon and an undetermined number of "stars." On days five and six he creates man and the other creatures. Not until day five does the Biblical account require a 24 hour day if taken absolutely literally as I do.I believe everything from day five on is about 6000 years old. Everything on the first four days have an undetermined age which only God knows.

Mike pretty well covered my reasons for my statements. Thanks Mike. It takes me a while to get back to responses as I'm a busy fellow. You see Darwin, all the text uses to describe "days" were evenings and mornings. The earth was, according to Genesis created before the sun and an undetermined number of stars. The Holy Spirit was doing the working according to Genesis one and Psalms 104:30. It is my believe that the all powerful Holy Spirit was the light of it while present working. Nothing was in place to light the earth or to determine the length of the evenings and mornings until sometime in day four when the creation of the sun, moon and "stars" were put in place. Even the plant life preceeded the sun. So how can we say emphatically that the first four days were 24 hour days?And to say the universe is only 6000 years old is just plain unthinkable. That would have the eternal God, creator of the universe, who claims to be the same yesterday, today and forever out in space all by himself with nothing around him and nothing to do for all eternity preceeding a mere 6000 years ago. I must say, I don't blame the critics for rolling their eyes at that notion.

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The immeasurable present is forever consuming the eternal future and extending the infinite past. buz

To clarify my position, I would assume cultures very early had dials for measuring the segments of the days, whether it was in hours, watches or what. The shadow dial is mentioned first in II Kings 20:11 ( the 7th century BC) and some place by the prophet Isaiah. I believe the prophet Daniel was the first to use the term, "hour" in the 5th century. That is not to say hours could not have been in use well before that. When I said 24 hour days began after day four, all I was saying is the length of the day after day four was what we would know as 24 hours.

You miss my point, being that the duration an evening and morning day would depend on something other than the sun before it was created. It would depend on how fast the earth revolved or in fact if it revolved at all. The Holy Spirit, if indeed he was the light of it by day would determine how long the days and nights would be and as to how the light was shown upon the earth. He could have lit the whole earth simultaneously for the day and darkened it for the night. The Bible simply does not give the specifics of this information. What it does say is that on day four there was created a natural body to determine the days months seasons and years. This implies that before this they were undetermined, does it not?