You don't follow correct, sound principles of biblical interpretation, but make scripture a matter of private interpretation. Your type of approach leads to a multitude of problems and wrong, incorrect interpretations throughout Church history like when people erroneously take Jeremiah 10:1-5 to be a 'clear', 'obvious' prohibition against Christmas trees.
If one follows sound hermeneutical principles, then the apologetic, polemical nature of Genesis 1 against Ancient Near East pagan cosmologies and Egyptian cosmologies in particular cannot be denied, and Genesis 1 must be interpreted in that context. Sound principles of biblical interpretation require it.
You can still 'give me the four-hundred and eleven' you owe me though.
I believe in a systematic view of scripture. It cannot lead to multi-able translations; all text has to agree with all other text that is not something that allows for someone to alter the meaning into something that disagrees with the rest of the scripture. Your view does just what you are complaining about; the things in that chapter and other things in the book were quoted by various speakers/writers of other books as true events. You've turned them into something other than the reality that they portray. As I said, there is truth, points of view don't shape truth, there is truth, opinions will vary with the wind, reality doesn't bend to our feelings or will, or our desires to see reality look like as we want it to be.
The irony you can't see is that you've read your own modern cultural understanding into the text where it doesn't belong. I do not advocate multiple interpretation readings. There can be only a single original meaning and this original meaning doesn't change. This is exactly what the *historical-grammatical* method every pastor learns in seminary is intent on determining: the author's original intent by looking at the grammar, syntax and the historical/cultural context.
The irony is that your interpretation is simply another erroneous interpretation in a long line of them down through history that is colored and skewed by the modern worldview you've been raised in. It's just like those who read Christmas trees into Jeremiah 10:1-5 because it's so 'obvious' that that's the 'clear meaning' of the text--even though it can't be since Christmas trees are a relatively new invention that have only been around since the 16th century. It's like those who read dinosaurs into Job because it's so 'obvious' and 'clear' that behemoth and leviathan are descriptions of dinosaurs, even though dinosaurs are only a relatively recent discovery of science and other verses in the Bible show that things like leviathan can't be dinosaurs. It's like OECs who erroneously read the modern day notion of the Big Bang into Genesis 1:3. It's like YECs who erroneously read a 'water vapor canopy' into the 'waters above'.
What you, YECs, and OECs can't seem to see is that you actually give modern science more credit than you realize and allow modern science to influence your reading of the Bible more than you realize, whereas ironically, I, as a scientist, do not because I know modern science is a relatively new phenomenon that hasn't always been around and therefore can't have any bearing on the original intended meaning of the text.
The correct meaning is the original intended meaning. The original meaning does not change. The application of it may, but the original meaning does not.
(And on a side note you need to 'give me the four-hundred and eleven' you owe me)
For me, this is very simple, what was created on day three, day four, and day five? Was anything created on those days, or not, in reality? If not, why were the words selected to describe the event used? Why not use words that actually give an accurate account instead of these magic fact finders Egypt knowledge is required words for countless generations to see!? God knew who would read the text later. Words have meaning; using them when getting any point across is always done with intent; you are undercutting that here.
I have to say, when you require an outside source or knowledge to decipher scripture, that bothers me. I grant we have our worldviews, that is just part of being human, nothing new there under the sun, but having to have Egyptian knowledge of the past to be able to read what is clearly written seemed to add to scripture, something I don't think is needed, required, or desired.
I'm not going in circles; however, one of us seems to be doing massive grammatical gymnastics at the moment. Frankly, what you are doing with Jeremiah has nothing to do with a common ancestor and six days of creation, as it is clearly written. Your adding qualifiers to terms like "scientifically factual information" muddies up the only thing that matters: is factual? It can be factual, and science could miss it due to its built-in blinders limiting how it can measure weight.
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At the risk of seeming pedantic, there isn't a separate set of facts that are 'scientific', only facts.
Science is a method by which the matter of fact of some natural process is established (as best it can be) but never proven beyond all doubt.
This is one of the reasons I really like the way you think, yes...totally agree. I will also say tbwp10 as well, I just find myself disagreeing with the two of you a lot.