Robert Rose,
 
You are correct in saying the earth was created before the sun, moon and stars because that is indeed what the Bible states in Genesis 1:16-19.  The moon and stars were created to provide light to the earth. It does not go on to say, or refute, that the earth is positioned at one foci of an elliptical orbit that describes its movement when viewed from above the earth and Sun, according to Kepler and Copernicus (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler%27s_laws_of_planetary_motion ).
 
The two concepts: 1) order of creation and 2) rotational positioning of earth around the Sun are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Our space travel navigation to the moon and elsewhere use the heliocentric hypothesis of Kepler and Copernicus and it has proven to be practical and useful.
 
But perhaps we should remind ourselves that their mathematical hypothesis may be simply a result of the point of view of the observer. From the Sun it would appear that the earth is revolving in an elliptical orbit around the Sun.
 
However, viewed from the surface of the earth the Sun can be described, as is the case in many verses of the Bible, as rising and setting across the sky. Since God made man to be on the earth, not on the Sun, then we could argue that the proper perspective for man is from the earth. In that case, the Keplerian laws can still be useful in computing the earth's position relative to the Sun, without ever addressing the order of creation of these two bodies either one way or the other.
 
As in quantum physics, light can be thought of a wave with interference properties, or as a particle, or photon, that has discreteness, so perhaps the earth and Sun can be viewed in origination according to the Bible as stated in Genesis and according to man's science for purposes of determining positions relative to the Sun. It's probably not an either-or situation and perhaps should not be artificially forced to be one either.
 
Thanks for bringing up this interesting subject. It is always good to go to the Bible and test our observational theories obtained from scientific observation. We must always however keep in mind that our understanding of the universe we live in is apriori conditioned by our neural stuctures that are saturated with three-dimensional biases. While the earth may in fact revolve around the Sun, that does not mean the earth is in any way inferior in position or in order of its creation.
 
YBIC,
 
Robert