Genesis 1:1 KJV
[1] In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

Mankind has a penchant, propensity or knack, call it what you will for asking the wrong question. Wrong headed thinking is the cause of much confusion in regards to understanding what the Bible is communicating on many subjects and in particular the creation story. In 2 Timothy 2:15, Paul instructs Timothy to study, so that he may "rightly divide the word of truth". We cannot study without asking questions and it stands to reason one cannot learn the "right" or correct answer apart from the truth.

No one can deny that we live in a time of unrivaled access to the sum of mankind's knowledge. Some historians say this "Age of Enlightenment" began in the 18th century, while others date its beginnings to the 17th Century. René Descarte, a 17th century philosopher famously coined the phrase "I think, therefore I am". That phrase and all philosophies actually find their Genesis in the garden of Eden, pun intended. Regardless of when our enlightenment began asking the wrong question will invariably lead us down a bogus rabbit trail, which is exactly what we Christians began doing in the 20th century until today regarding the creation story.

Misunderstanding what an author or speaker is trying to communicate invariably leads to the wrong question. Asking the wrong question is often a precipitation of a failure to study. Let me give an example by looking at the word precipitation in the previous sentence. If a person did not know the complete meaning of precipitation then they would not know what I am talking about at all. Even worse if they had only a partial understanding of precipitations meaning they might think that failure to study causes rain or snow. Imagine the consequences of such crazy thinking if our children believed lack of study would cause snow! If we do not know the definition of a word, we mess a great deal of what an author could be trying to communicate. On the flip side of the coin if we read something extra into a word we could add an unintended idea to what an author is trying to communicate.

One huge misstep we make in Bible interpretation is to impose a preconceived idea upon the Biblical text. When we place wrong headed ideas upon a text we lead the text towards our preferred conclusions. Trying to reconcile the Biblical Creation Account with various scientific theory's, such as the Big Bang or any other theory, is like trying to mix water and oil. When I went to school there was a big difference between a "scientific theory" and a "scientific law". A theory was a proposal based upon a group of hypothesis(educated guesses) the intent being to predict a scientific phenomenon. More often then not theories are proven to be wrong. A scientific law is a proven set of facts! Let me boil it down to the basics with a couple of simplified word equations:
Theory = Guess, whereas Law = Fact.

Inventing pseudo sciences or hybrids of science theories and theology, such as intelligent design are exercises in futility. Why are we Christians even bothering to counter a bunch of unprovable theories that really have nothing to do with the Biblical creation account. We Christians have let the master of deception lead us down a fruitless rabbit trail into a tangled brier patch. We have drawn some very bad theological conclusions about the point of the Biblical creation account all because we have been duped into asking the wrong questions. We ask and answer questions about the creation account, which in reality are not relevant to the creation account because we missed the entire point which is communicated in the first sentence of Genesis; which is, IN THE BEGINNING GOD CREATED THE HEAVEN AND THE EARTH. As the Loony Tunes cartoon character Porky Pig would say, "That's all folks!"

So the correct question would be: What is the purpose of the creation account? The slightly longer answer is that the creation account in Genesis is a summary account of GOD'S miraculous creative ability. He simple spoke and everything leaped into existence at His word.

The Bible is not trying to tell us how particles, atoms, mankind or anything else came together other then in the general sense that God speaking caused everything. He is the eternal, uncaused, first cause. God is not giving us some starting point to count backwards in order to calculate how old the Earth is. What difference does it make how old the Earth is when our average life span is 70-80 years and a few of us might live at most to be 120 years old. Paul told Timothy to avoid trying to disprove oppositions of science, falsely so called. See 1 Tim 6:20. Let's quit chasing our tails like a beagle befuddled by all the rabbit trails and study the word in God's context without trying to explain questions the Bible is not asking.