A literal reading of the book of Genesis has a number of issues of internal consistency making it difficult to read literally, here are a few topics to think about followed with some thoughts:

-There is not one story of creation: Turns out there are not one but two stories of creation. There is the story of the 7 days of creation and the story of the Garden of Eden. This leads to some redundancy in the creation story (creating animals twice?). Some translations try to gloss over it but others show a rather clear distinction in how one concludes and a seemingly new story starts.

-The first story of creation is not at all clear how God started creation. Did he start from nothingness or void or what there something existent from which he formed the universe. Unfortunately in order to really see this you need to look at the original Hebrew as it implies both. Most translations end up emphasizing one way or the other due to the limitations in translating all implications from one language to another in one go.

I suppose neither of these two points is overly problematic yet. After all couldn't one story be an elaboration on another? Couldn't one simply be a "highlight reel" while the other delves into the details? Lets examine that closer with two questions concerning the order of creation:

-What came first animals or humans?

Aha! I have the answer, it is humans!

"then the LORD God formed the man* out of the dust of the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being." Genesis 2:7

"The LORD God said: It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suited to him. So the LORD God formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds of the air, and he brought them to the man to see what he would call them; whatever the man called each living creature was then its name. " Genesis 2:18;19

But wait...what about the first story of creation? What was the order on the 6th day again?

"God made every kind of wild animal, every kind of tame animal, and every kind of thing that crawls on the ground. God saw that it was good. Then God said: Let us make* human beings in our image, after our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the tame animals, all the wild animals, and all the creatures that crawl on the earth. " Genesis 1:25;26

Hmm, so in one story mankind is the pinnacle of God's creation. His ultimate work that comes last in the temporal sense and comes