Huge topic, one that always incites a flame war on the internet. Yet, it's one that is relevant to the faith of billions of people around the world.
Like any war, there are the 2 primary sides: those who take the creation as described in Scripture as a literal account, and another side that holds the naturalist belief that there is no God, no supernatural forces, nothing outside the natural world.
There are even more that hold middle-of-the-fence beliefs. I've talked to several theistic evolutionists recently that hold the idea that evolution is true, but claim the initial creation of life must've come from some extra-natural (or supernatural) power, simply due to the empirical fact that all life comes from other life: biogenesis. Once life was created, theistic evolutionists claim, life started evolving into what we have today. Impaled on the other half of the fence in the middle of the road, there are theists that believe the account in Genesis is more likely an allegory than a literal account; pointing to the fact that many of the accounts in Scripture -- for example, the parables of Jesus -- are allegories. The latter group seems to feel that all the evidences presented by indoctrined evolutionists -- including virtually all the media in the civilized world -- must have some truth to it, and thus, believe some of it, tacking on God somewhere along the line for their conscience's or soul's sake.
I think one thing to keep in mind is that virtually all of us go on the word of others. I haven't personally examined deep layers in the earth's strata. Frequent blog visitor and English rose Ash hasn't personally examined carbon-14 dating and its accuracies. No, we all go on the words of what we're taught, what we hear in the media, and what everyone else believes. Then we argue the hell out of each other as if we all personally knew what the truth was.
One thing is certain for believers in God: the Tenakh/Old Testament, as well as the New Testament, is built on Genesis. Without Genesis, we don't have Abraham (say goodbye, Islam, Christianity, and Judaism). Without Abraham, we don't have Israel, without Israel we don't have David, without David we don't have Jesus Christ. This is just from a genealogical standpoint. From a spiritual standpoint, if one takes Adam out of the picture, we don't have things like original sin. Without sin, the shedding of blood for atonement of sin is pointless, and the shedding of the blood of the perfect Lamb, Jesus Christ, to atone for the sin of mankind is pointless as well. So while one can argue that you can keep faith in God by simply discarding the book of Genesis, you break a chain of events leading to the entire point of Christ, the very plan of God for mankind as laid out in Scripture is rendered meaningless.
I don't want to write a lengthy post on why I believe in a literal creation. I respect those that have differences or even the majority who totally oppose my views. I do, however, want to point all of you to a website I've found very helpful and informative. It's a pro-literal creation site, however, on a surprising and refreshing note, it's also very honest: it points out fallacies in modern creationism (such as the moon dust argument) or the supposed evidences of creation presented by Ron Wyatt, Dr. Carl Baugh, and others), as well as errors in evolutionary concepts (such as the non-existant transitional fossil record). I particularly like the Arguments Creationists Should NOT Use page, I found it very informative as well as embarrassing, as I have used a few of the listed fallacious arguments myself on occassion.
So have a look for yourself: Answers In Genesis. If you're a literal creationist like myself, you'll find a wealth of materials and facts to help you hold your own in the evolutionist onslaught we have today. Or if you're like most who just believes whatever modern science holds, I think it'll be worth your while to investigate what all the fuss is about on the other side of the fence.
