Re: Bible stories to be interpreted literally??

"Was not the birth of our present universe an act of creation by definition?  We can argue the minutaie of how evolution (or adaption) has occured and how all the stellar bodies and such came to be, but something started the ball rolling, at least on a cosmic scale. And life seems to find a way . . . as if it were somehow designed to do so."

Well, there are theories that our universe, or even a meta-verse, may have always existed.  If, under the current understanding of the "Big Bang" and the genesis of the universe,  you trace a "cause and effect" series of inter-relationships that is the universe back to a single point, you are indeed confronted the unavoidable and unfathomable conundrum of an "uncaused cause".  There are numerous cosmological theories, building from the knowledge of quantum mechanics, the posit that the universe has always existed.  There are also many theories about the illusory nature of both time and space- ultimately that neither exist. They just appear to us to exist.   And without time, there is ultimately no "before" or "after" although from our fractured sensory perspective it appears otherwise. Either way, you have either a pre-existent universe, or a pre-existence "something" (the uncaused cause) that caused the universe.

Note: I have always found it funny that those who invoke God as a creator often use the fact that there is order, beauty, love, and intelligence in the manifest world.  They say that this evidence that we must have been created by something.  And yet God, who is they contend is the utter apotheosis of order, beauty, intelligence, is uncreated. 

In accordance with the conventional cosmoglogical theories about time and the birth of the unvierse, you do indeed need "something" pre-existent.  But what if LIFE and all that is manifest in the physical (and non-physical) universe is that pre-existent something.  What if all of life, all of existence is that unborn/uncreated "something" that is constantly changing and becoming eternally NEW every second.

Even if the  "Big Bang" was the start of our manifest universe, what if  it wasn't truly a beginning, but rather a profound transmutation in the pre-existent, unformed, uncreated "something."  This is the direction that cosmology and physics are moving.

No matter theory you subscribe to, your are inevitably left with that pre-existent  "something."  In current cosmological theory, which is rapidly evolving mind you, this pre-existent something isn't really acknowledged directly.  The cosmologists talk about the infinite amount of energy packed into the infintessimally small point that gave "birth" to the universe through the massive expansion known at the "Big Bang" but they don't explicity state where that energy came from or if it came from anything.  They tend to allude to the fact that it didn't come from anything, and are implicity saying that this infinite energy was/is pre-existent.  Did this infintessimally small point of infinite energy (the pre-existent "something") really give "birth" to/create the universe or did it become the universe.  If that pre-existent enery was and is INFINITE, then it was and is All That Is.  There is nothing outside of it. Nothing can be outside of it.  Nothing can be created, for there is nothing more that can be generated (created) because it is All That Exists.  How do you add more to infinity?  Therefore, that pre-existent energy doesn't create, it changes, it becomes.  All That Exists is eternally becoming New. 

The laws of conservation of energy and matter state that energy and matter (matter is fundamentally immaterial; it is energy vibrating at a particular frequency) cannot be either created or destroyed.  This energy (that is light, matter, intelligence...everything) cannot be created or destroyed.  It cannot be added to or subtracted from.  It can only change.  It can only become new through change.

The Three theories of existence:

Instituionalized western religions posit that the pre-existent created the cosmos and everything in it.

Mystics of every spiritual tradition have always contended that the pre-existent IS the cosmos and everything in it.

Science, without ever explicity acknowledging anything as pre-existent, is most congruent with the mystical view of the universe. It is evolving and becoming even more aligned as more is learned.