I have only arrived at this view within the last year. Before that, my views on creation were more in line with the evolution theory that we're taught at school/university. I studied science and have a degree in Biochemistry. I thought God probably created things in line with what we know (or think we know!) about physics, biology, geology and chemistry and didn't have an issue with very long 'days' that were not 24 hr periods but perhaps hundreds of thousands of years covering each part of creation.
When my pastor announced at the end of last year we'd be doing our next sermon series on Genesis, part of me was worried because I know he's a literal 6 day-er and I felt sure I'd want to argue with everything presented. However I decided to just let things take their course and shelve what I thought I knew and go with the flow. (Of course later I found out he's also a science graduate as are most of the other members of my church, so it's not like he's ignorant of the underlying topics!). He suggested the commentary "The Genesis Account" by Jonathan Sarfati, which covers in detail chapers 1-11 and addresses various scientific claims.
It's amazing what you discover when you go through Genesis verse by verse. It's too easy to just read that first account of creation and miss things. I could go through those but I won't, because want to give you one stand out fact that you can consider for yourself, if you don't believe in the literal 6 days. This really got to me, and I realised creation could not possibly have happened over the huge time scale of millions of years that's presented to us, no matter how elegantly, and that it has huge implications.
When humans were created on Day 6, evolutionists say the rest of creation had already been around for millions of years. There had been disease, death and natural disasters according to the fossil records. However up till this point the creation was apparently 'good' according to God and there should have been no death or illness because Adam and Eve hadn't yet been created and so hadn't fallen and caused the whole of creation to fall, and death to be introduced. If evolution were true, then Adam and Eve would have been standing on a fossil graveyard of death and struggle over millions of years that God called 'very good'! The reason for the vast amount of buried plants and animals in rock layers is of course the Flood of Noah's time. In reality, plants and animals had only been in existence for three whole 24 hour days when Adam and Eve were created. Humanity fell pretty rapidly, probably within hours of creation. Then, the processes of decay and eventual disease and death began. This hit me like a sledgehammer and resulted in my belief that God did, in fact, create the world in a literal 6 day period. Otherwise disease and death had been ongoing for millions of years prior to the Fall and God is deceiving us. Unthinkable!
The commentary I mentioned gives detailed evidence for how the layers of fossils formed after the flood began to recede and answers many of the tricky questions of geology, in fact it goes into detail about all that is written from Genesis chapter 1 through to 11.
This post isn't about who is right or wrong with their beliefs on this subject, but I felt led to write about how I came to my view, and honestly it's been a great relief, to simply let the words of Genesis take their literal meaning and show God's marvellous plan of creation unfolding!