Yitay:
“This is the rationale of those who choose not to explain Bereishis literally, and choose science over literalism. ??? ????? ???? ??? ?? ??????? ?? ???????: not just because he is merciful, but because such a method would totally defeat the purpose.”
The problem that I have with this is that you seem to be assuming that everything that science tells us today is the absolute, unquestionable truth; and I’m simply not convinced that that is the case. Science at one point believed that the world was flat, the sun orbited the earth, thought took place in the heart, and rocks fell back to the ground because they got tired. Obviously, today we look at all that as foolish nonsense; what makes you think that in a couple of hundred years we won’t see today’s science in much the same light?
Science is merely the ever-changing observations and hypotheses of mortal flesh and blood as to how the universe works; the Torah is the Word of the Eternal Creator. If the two seem to disagree, I think it makes much more sense to assume that science is wrong than to change the meaning of the Torah.