During creation the Bible says, God saw that various things were 'good'. Did He not know they were going to be good?
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Your whole premise is that God didn't have the foreknowledge of the goodness of his creation before he declared it to be good. That isn't a premise supported by scripture. God isn't limited by time.
Ephesians 1:4 ESV ...even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.
God knew about YOU before he made anything.
Furthermore, the phrase "God saw that it was good" is ambiguous in this regard and doesn't necessarily imply that God didn't already know it'd be good. Like Flimzy said in the comments, if I make a cake that I already know is going to be good, I might still say "This cake is so good!"
So why would this statement be important enough to place in scripture? I think it was so that we knew that it was good--because there are people out there that might get to thinking that the creation is evil.
Romans 15:4 ESV For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.
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Your premise that God might have been surprised at the fact that his creation was good, is belied by your own statement that God knew everything ahead of time.
In God's plan (which is a mystery to us) in order for things to work as he planned; everything had to start out perfect, so it is not surprising that God would comment that things were ready to start. As far as the use of the term good. when we take a longer look at that what we find is that in the Hebrew the word used was:
ṭôb
tobe
good (as an adjective) in the widest sense; used likewise as a noun, both in the masculine and the feminine, the singular and the plural (good, a good or good thing, a good man or woman; the good, goods or good things, good men or women), also as an adverb (well): - beautiful, best, better, bountiful, cheerful, at ease, X fair (word), (be in) favour, fine, glad, good (deed, -lier, liest, -ly, -ness, -s), graciously, joyful, kindly, kindness, liketh (best), loving, merry, X most, pleasant, + pleaseth, pleasure, precious, prosperity, ready, sweet, wealth, welfare, (be) well ([-favoured]).
In this case it is being used as an adverb modifying the verb was, and what God was really saying was that it was now ready for his plans.
We do not need to read confusion into the Bible, what we need to do is to take it as it is translated, since there is no way that modern languages can adequately reflect the way something was said in an ancient language. as you can see from the above example words can and do have different meanings depending on how they are used, and even then there are multiple meanings in modern language, which would not be true in the ancient language.
This is especially true of American English which has a background based in so many differing languages. The use of a certain word in one culture may have a totally different meaning in another culture.
The word 'fool is a good example since in one culture it means a buffoon, and in another culture it means a unlearned person.
It has been my experience that if we try to understand the use of certain words in the Bible we are going to do some serious research.
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