I am really tired of those pseudo-literalists known as young-earth creationists. I really want people to take the entirety of Genesis 1 literally, and not just the parts they find acceptable. Saying that you believe in creation in six literal days, but without a literal dome over the earth, and without the greater and lesser lights fixed in that dome, you are not taking the account literally. If you say that there was a vapor canopy in the upper atmosphere, when Genesis 1 says that the solid dome had waters above it, you are not taking the account literally. It is just the same for the rest of Genesis – if you say you are following the Bible literally, and then make a replica of the ark that is 510 feet long, you are in fact being less than literal.
The big issue in our time is not that too many people take Genesis literally, but that not enough people do.
If more people took the account literally in all its details, they would have no choice but to acknowledge that the account is incompatible with our modern scientific and other knowledge when taken that way. And so they would recognize that taking it completely literally leads not to young-earth creationism, but to the acknowledgment that the text's depiction of the natural world may be either mistaken or symbolic (or both), but under no circumstances can be taken as factual and accurate.
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