ok - I'll play.
If the sun had showed up on day 4 and "snagged the Earth" into orbit then one would think it would have messed up the place in terms of the plants already established with the result that on days 5 and 6... no plants to eat. Or is there some physics showing that a sun passing by the Earth pulls earth into inner orbit within a 24 hour window - inside the 4th planet's orbit without causing a massive geothermal event all over the surface of the planet?
or is it that we toss out the creation account entirely "six days you shall labor...for in six days the LORD made" Ex 20:11 -- and just settle for "over billions of years the earth was acquired by the sun after plants had already started to evolve"?
As is indicated in the Bible as a future state, the Creator supplies the light necessary with His presence during the time of creation and until the Sun is brought into play.
I am of the opinion that although from the Creators perspective the Earth was created in 6 days, that the perspective of long ages and design progression and development from the perspective of an observer within the system are accurate.
This article is informative:
Age of the Universe
"One of the most obvious perceived contradictions between Torah and science is the age of the universe. Is it billions of years old, like scientific data, or is it thousands of years, like Biblical data? When we add up the generations of the Bible, we come to 5700-plus years. Whereas, data from the Hubble telescope or from the land based telescopes in Hawaii, indicate the age at about 15 billion years.....
.....The calculations come out to be as follows:
• The first of the Biblical days lasted 24 hours, viewed from the "beginning of time perspective." But the duration from our perspective was 8 billion years.
• The second day, from the Bible's perspective lasted 24 hours. From our perspective it lasted half of the previous day, 4 billion years.
• The third 24 hour day also included half of the previous day, 2 billion years.
• The fourth 24 hour day ― one billion years.
• The fifth 24 hour day ― one-half billion years.
• The sixth 24 hour day ― one-quarter billion years.
When you add up the Six Days, you get the age of the universe at 15 and 3/4 billion years. The same as modern cosmology. Is it by chance?
But there's more. The Bible goes out on a limb and tells you what happened on each of those days. Now you can take cosmology, paleontology, archaeology, and look at the history of the world, and see whether or not they match up day-by-day. And I'll give you a hint. They match up close enough to send chills up your spine." Dr Gerald Schroeder
So the period for which the Earth needed the Creators light is probably a billion years or so, not 1 Solar day (a time frame which didn't exist until the planet was in orbit around the Sun anyway).
