Why I believe in God: Evolution vs. creation

I recently finished watching the debate between Bill Nye and Ken Ham regarding the logical soundness of the creation model vs. the evolution model.  It gave me an opportunity to think about how I really feel regarding science and religion (although I have done so many times in the past), and this time I felt that I could share a few ideas I have relating to the subject of the existence of a higher power.  I will first describe how I believe that the existence of a higher power is not only possible but plausible, and then I will discuss why I personally believe in a supreme being.

Why God is "allowed" to exist

Evolution vs. creation:  How did life and matter come into being?

I don't want to spend too much time discussing the Nye vs. Ham debate (if you're interested, here it is).  There were several subjects, however, that Ham had a difficult time reconciling with Nye's points, and Nye requested elaboration on several topics multiple times that Ham never provided.  I feel that a lot of Ham's difficulty in the discussion came from the fact that he posits a literal interpretation of the Genesis text.  Ham, and all of the creationist scientists he cites, believes that the events of the creation took place in six 24-hour periods and that the earth, as well as the universe, does not far exceed an age of 6,000 years.  Much of Nye's evidence was pretty glaring in its challenge to the credulity of Ham's claims.

Having been raised a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons), I admit that a good portion of my thought process during the debate was what it would have been like for Ham if he had approached the issue from the perspective of Mormon theology.  I am not implying that a debate between Bill Nye and a Mormon would be devoid of intellectual inconsistency on the part of LDS theology, but several specifically LDS teachings regarding the creation are, in my opinion, more in agreement with scientific evidence than those of mainstream Christianity (at least as set forth by Ham).

I don't consider myself an expert on Mormon theology, and much of what I say may be merely my own interpretation of LDS doctrine.  Take it with a grain of salt.  But here are some ideas I find plausible (meaning I am not presenting them as fact), some only loosely based on LDS theology, that may explain some of the events behind the creation:

1. God has created "worlds without number" (Moses 1:33), and they were not necessarily all created at the same time; in fact, they probably were not.  Thousands of planets could have been created before our world ever even began.
2. The six periods of time during which God created the earth are symbolically given the appellation of "days", and do not refer to 24-hour periods of time.  Thus, the creation could theoretically have taken thousands, millions, or billions of years by our time standards.
3. Adam and Eve were the first two human beings to inhabit the planet, but they may not have been the only two human or human-like beings on the earth by the time the Fall occurred and they were cast from the garden.  We don't know how long Adam and Eve were in the garden, and I find it reasonable that if the garden was separated from the rest of the world in the spiritual sense, it could plausibly be sequestered in an evolutionary biological sense.  The process of evolution of various life forms could have happened exactly as modern science describes it, including the evolution of primates to humans or human-like beings, while Adam and Eve remained in the garden.  (If this is the case, I don't have an opinion about how long any pre-Adamic human races remained, or if they intermixed with Adam and Eve's posterity.  I haven't really been exposed to enough evidence to formulate an opinion about either of these ideas.)

I don't pretend that these ideas reconcile all the difficulties between the evolution model and the creation model.  For example, I don't know how to reconcile the Biblical or LDS teachings regarding Noah's flood with several pieces of evidence Bill Nye mentioned during the debate, though I do not feel that there is no explanation.  But what I've learned about the factual process of evolution has not disturbed my perception of how the creation could have happened.  As far as the Big Bang and the creation of the universe in general, I am not enough a student of physics or astronomy to know much of the theory behind this, but I do find it plausible that the Big Bang or something like it could have been wrought by a supreme creator as well.