Cosmology-Torah vs Science

"Upon occasion, (atheist scientist Stephen) Hawking has stated that time actually began with the Big Bang, and that questions about what happened before the Big Bang are meaningless. This less-nuanced, but commonly repeated formulation has received criticisms from philosophers such as Aristotelian philosopher Mortimer J. Adler." [Time and the Big Bang](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time#Time and the Big Bang)

Although the Bible is intended as an ethical guidebook for man, and not as a science textbook, the basic sequence of events in the Creation process were explained in the book of Genesis using simple language so that all could understand.

The Biblical sequence of Creation events would seem to be perfectly compatible with advanced modern science:

1. The Universe did not exist forever and had a beginning in the finite past. In addition, according to Maimonides (12th century CE) we cannot know exactly when the Universe was created because time itself was created.
2. The initial Universe described as unformed matter in Genesis 1:2 was an extremely tiny point of formless matter. (Nachmanides 13th century CE)
3. All the matter in the Universe was initially created (Genesis 1:1) and the components of the Universe were gradually separated (Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed II:30).
4. The first animals were various types of swarming marine invertebrate. (Genesis 1:20).
5. There was a gradual metaphysical upward increase in biological complexity over time, that was NOT due to Darwinism.
6. Man (as we know him) is the most complex creature and was created last and very recently (Genesis 1:26). Thus recorded human history is much shorter than the age of the Universe.