A few quick responses, Benjamin. You say

"But this is an overstatement. What's so convenient about a mostly lifeless universe? It took at least a billion years for life-sustaining planets to develop. If God wanted it to be convenient, why wouldn't he have snapped his fingers to cut to the chase? That's what Genesis says happened, in line with our childish intuitions: life was created in five days. And life was the crowning achievement, so God rested on the seventh day, after he made people."

What is convenient is that life exists at least once in a mostly barren universe and we are here to have this discussion. You don't find that convenient? The fact that it is rare, exceedingly rare, and may turn out to be completely unique does not diminish at all the meaningfulness. It seems to me to support the biblical account.

You suggest our problem is anthropomorphism, but suggesting that time is a problem for the creator seems to be very a great example of that. A googol of years means nothing when, as Tim Andersen explains (see my last post), that time is sucked up into the singularity of a Black Hole.

Speaking of time, you say Genesis says creation occurred in five days. Sure, there are some who believe that "yom" in Genesis means an earthly 24 hour day. But there are a number of literal translations of yom, a major one simply being a period of time. I think it's called a strawman when you set up something like the misinterpretation of Genesis as representative of biblical belief.