Does the Bible's creation account rule out the possibility that the universe began with the big bang

The bible is totally silent on all these points. Its become a backass allegory. Instead of interpreting something spiritual from the concrete, we seem to be wanting to " reverse engineer" any drops of science from the poetry of the bible's verses.
Biblical literalists believe that the bible is divinely inspired and they therefore interpret it in whatever way they wish and they call it "truth".

Most science is immeasurably more demanding of its data and evidence.

Therefore, in my own humble opinion, yes the story of CREQTION does rule out big bang, string theory, DNA, divinely inspired abiogenesis, and evolution.

I don't necessarily agree with that. Not that I have the direct from God word on it. We don't know in what form this information was given to the writer (whoever he was) but it could have been as a vision that the writer remembered, interpreted and wrote down as best he could.

The contradiction you are intimating here has it that all the stars, including the sun, were made at once which does not make sense scientifically or with the Genesis text which has the darkness and light separated on the first 'day'. Without the sun, it would have been nothing but dark.

If the vision was from the perspective of an observer on earth, the stars appearing on 'day' 4 could be explained by the travel time of light from those stars to reach earth. (It only takes 8 minutes from sun to earth but millions of years in the case of some stars)

My point is that not only is it unreasonable to expect textbook accuracy from a man given a vision of events far from his own understanding and that the events can be looked at from a different perspective that can eliminate contradictions.

Actually not, if you were to consider the viewpoint of an earthbound observer where the night sky would have been obscured by atmospheric haze. Additionally, Genesis 1:1 includes the entire universe.

Although i personally prefer the King James Version because of the elegance of the English used therein, i know that it is not the most commonly used translation. (Christian sources do not agree on this point. Some allege that the King James Version is the most popular version in the United States, based on polling. Some allege that the New International Version is the most popular based on dollar sales. Some allege that the New Living Translation is the most popular based on unit sales. The Christian Business Association list the New International Version as number one in montary and unit sales.) In this example i have used the text of the New International Version, which not only has the largest gross sales, but the sales of which has been growing for decades.

From the New International Version:

1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. 3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day. 6 And God said, “Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water.” 7 So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. And it was so. 8 God called the vault “sky.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day. 9 And God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.” And it was so. 10 God called the dry ground “land,” and the gathered waters he called “seas.” And God saw that it was good. 11 Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.” And it was so. 12 The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. 13 And there was evening, and there was morning—the third day. 14 And God said, “Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years, 15 and let them be lights in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth.” And it was so. 16 God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. 17 God set them in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth, 18 to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19 And there was evening, and there was morning—the fourth day.

This is a very confused account. Note that "the deep" and "the waters" and "the vault of the sky" are all existent at that time. Leaving aside the very obvious question of who or what created the "god" mentioned in the text, it is important to take into consideration that the Torah was heavily revised at the time of the Babylonian captivity. Although there may have once been a single author (which i personally doubt), during the Captivity, a class of scribes arose, and the Pentateuch was heavily edited. It cannot be considered to be the work of a single man nor an individual account of a vision or revelation. From the Wikipedia article on the Babylonia captivity:

I wonder how many were able to read?

Among observant Jews, the number should have been rather high. Without going into detail, this was especially true after the return from the Babylonian captivity. See History of Education in Acient Israel and Judah at Wikipedia.

Compared to other cultures such as the Chinese, I wonder how they compare?

Let's consider the correct scientific view of the universe.

You can then tell me whether your understanding of the Bible contradicts this or not. If you tell me that the Bible supports the idea that almost 15 billion years, and several generations of stars, took place before the development of life on earth... with human life coming hundreds of millions of years after that... then I won't argue with you. It is just that I have always interpreted the biblical text in a different way.

1) The big bang was 15 billion years ago.

2) 560 million years after that the stars were formed out of hydrogen and helium (before this no other elements existed).

3) One of these stars exploded in a supernova spewing out the heavier elements that make up world today.

4) 9 billion years after the big bang, the elements that now make up you and me and the solar system were a big cloud. Gravity started pulling them together.

5) Some hundreds of millions of years later, the Sun formed and ignited and the planets coalesced.

6) A billion years or so ago, life formed from complex organic compounds.

7) 65 million years ago dinosaurs ruled

8) 250 thousand years ago what we now call human beings first existed.

Does the Bible really support the scientific view in your opinion?

China's culture was one in which literacy was neither easy nor valued. Unlike many other cultures, the Chinese did not develop a class of priests, but rather a class of bureaucrats, who were, of course, literate. (The ritual role of Shang emperors in the period before the Zhou was involved in ancestor worship and divination, not organized religion as we think of it. Ancient Chinese "religion" obviously believed in an afterlife, but no real concept of god--just spirits, most of them untrustworthy.) The use of such bureaucrats is attested among the Zhou, even before they became an imperial dynasty--reaching back more than 3000 years. These are the people whom we call Mandarins, from a Portuguese coinage in the early 17th century. Mandarins provided continuity across the country, and from one ruler to the next, as well as from one dynasty to the next. They became as valuable to rulers as military leaders were in the west, and were usually retained when a new ruler or a new dynasty took over. In 221 BCE, the Qin dynasty was established. (Qin is pronounced as we might pronounce "chin," although that's a gross simplification--but that is the origin of the name China.) Qin Shi Huang, the first Qin emperor, established a examination system for the Mandarins, who appear to have casually existed in many feudal states since the time of the Zhou--literacy was a valuable trait, but was not encouraged in the general population. They didn't need to read, they just needed to raise rice or wheat, and pigs and chickens. The people of what we call China were at that time ethnic Han, and they resented these invaders from the west--fifteen years after Qin Shi Huang's conquest of what would become China, his son died at a time when the constant rebellions had gotten beyond the ability of Qin military forces to manage, and the Han dynasty arose. The Mandarins and the examination system was maintained thereafter until Sun Yat-sen's successful rebellion in 1912.

Maybe not. But the rest of the Bible as a whole does rule out a Big Bang that happened 15 billion years ago, if we take its word on specific time intervals (like the world being created in 7 days) and assume realistic values for everything else. Indeed, the Biblical chronology rules out a Big Bang that happened anything much longer than a couple thousand years ago. The orthodox Hebrew calendar, for example, is based on the Biblical chronology, and it alleges that the world is 5776 years old.

With only a few insignificant differences in details, I'd say that the bible does not contradict that series of events. For example, science puts the Big Bang at around 13.78 Byrs ago, not 15. The bible does not give the figure but does not contradict either figure.

The only possible significant difference is when conscious human beings (man) arrived ( or was created). I see no clue as to exactly when that happened other than near the end.

But more interesting, how do you interpret the biblical text?

I interpret the Biblical text that the world was created in 6 days. I interpret the word "day" as a "morning and an evening".

If we look at each of the six days...

Day one night was separated from day (but the stars, Sun and Moon hadn't been created yet because they were created three days later).

Day two God separated the water from the sky.

Day three God created plants.

Day four God created the Sun, Moon and stars.

Day five God create fish, sea creatures and birds.

Day six God created land animals (which would include dinosaurs) and humans.

The Bible is absolutely clear that the plants were created before the Sun... if you can interpret this away, then you can make the Bible say anything you want.

I'm not even sure why people argue about how many days it took to create our universe. Days are a joke when we have more information about the age of planet earth. It's more than 4.5 billion years old: Older than the bible that claims its young earth.

How you wish to interpret the length of the days won't change the meaning of the Hebrew yom. It means a unspecified time. Did you notice the also unspecified time before day one?

nuthin up my sleeve, except an international Thesaurus rex.

If the bible is SILENT on these very issues, of course it cannot contradict. However, neither does it even remotely SUPPORT.

so the bible mentions the big bang . I wonder what Fr LeMaitre would have to say about biblical inclusion.

For how long an unspecified time did plants survive with no sun?

No, it doesn't. The text couldn't be more clear. The Bible defines what it means by the word "day". This phrase is repeated for each of the six days.

And Neologist,

It is also clear from the text that plants were formed before the Sun existed. This has nothing to do with the length of a day.

Do you agree that the Bible makes it clear that plants came first?