Hello Nick,
I’ve been following this post and I don’t see how the concordance you speak of in Genesis 1 can be thought of as, “accurate” in any way, or even a simplified version of the timeline of origin events, though I myself held your views for most of my Christian life. It seems that in your efforts to harmonize modern science with passages in Genesis 1 that you’ve obfuscated things a little bit and have left other things out. Genesis 1 has the earth as an existing entity on (or before) day 1 with the Spirit of God, “hovering over the waters”. However, you failed to mention that water on earth didn’t appear for 500 million years after the earth had cooled and steam gas condensed and fell to earth, eventually forming a large, shallow ocean. For the sun, we know that it was created before the earth from science and you have the sun, “igniting” per verse three, apparently creating the light in that passage and implying that the sun had already existed and was now lighting up. A clump did ignite in nuclear explosions when it forming in the middle of the solar nebular, but that actually created the sun and that happened before the earth was formed formed, contradicting the sun being, “created” on the fourth day, which is 2/3 the way through the creation acts of Genesis 1. This seems to much more than a simplification of the actual events of creation - it’s a major mistake in the timeline.
Your description of the raqia also is missing details. The, “vault” as described in verses 6-8 is surely describing the atmosphere that was on the earth at the time of the writing of Genesis 1 and God called it the, “sky”, when ancient near-east peoples thought that there was a solid dome holding up the waters of heaven. However, it took 2 billion years for this type of blue-sky atmosphere to develop. The early earth atmosphere came from gases spewed out of volcanoes - mostly hydrogen sulfide, methane, steam and carbon dioxide as far as we know. This was a dense, steamy atmosphere, not like today’s. Water then formed on the surface and at that time methane droplets formed in the air and covered the world in a methane haze. The water collected and in time became oceans and life formed in them, cyanobacteria, which released gaseous oxygen into the atmosphere. This started ~2.7 billion years ago and the oxygen reacted with the methane and eventually cleared out the methane haze and created the blue sky we have now. This was ~2.5 billion years ago. You wrote, “the earth, compressed further, with heavy elements such as iron and radioactive isotopes sinking to the center, and lighter elements such as water and gasses floating out to the exterior.” This describes the, “1st atmosphere”, in earth’s earliest period, dense and steamy, but with no, “vault”. The second atmosphere was the methane haze atmosphere then the blue sky atmosphere some 2.5 billion years ago.
So Genesis 1 has the, “heavens and the earth” created at the beginning and God’s Spirit hovering over the waters, before the 1st day. The 1st day had light created, the 2nd had the raqia (vault) created and God called this, "sky’. The 3rd day God had the water, "gathered to one place, creating, “land” and, “seas”. No sun yet. So the timeline is Earth covered by water, light, sky, then water coalescing creating land then the sun.
From modern science we know that the universe was created at the Big Bang, 9.3 billion years later the sun formed, then the earth, then water then the sky. So some big discrepancies between the timelines of Genesis 1 and modern science.
Genesis 1 also has vegetation created in the 3rd day, the sun and moon in the 4th day, then fish and birds in the 5th day, land creatures in the 6th day and man later in the 6th day.
You wrote, “Science teaches that some of the microbes that evolved stopped getting their energy from the surrounding environment, and instead started getting their energy by consuming other microbes. These microbes further evolved into early animals such as fish, amphibians, and dinosaurs which further evolved into Birds. Coincidence?” I don’t know if one can really harmonize days 3-6 with the evolution since the writer is clearly talking about species that lived on earth when he wrote, which was probably about 4,000 years ago. If you want to go that route, though, basically for biologic complex,multicellular life fish evolved first, then land-based plants, then land-based animals then birds then man. Genesis 1 has plants, fish and birds the same day, land base creatures then man.
So as you can see Genesis contains huge mistakes in the cosmological and biological timelines that I think prohibit it to be considered a condensed version or a simplification of the timeline of creation that we know from modern science. Also, another reason that I don’t like the day-age theory any longer is that the writer clearly makes the case that the days are actual, 24 hour days, since he writes, “there was evening, and there was morning, the [ ] day.” Overall the evidence is pretty clear that Genesis 1 is a theology, and not a scientific lesson.