Following is a scientific account of the formation of the universe and the things in it. It has been largely dumbed-down to resemble what you might see on the Science, National Geographic, Discovery, and History channels (although it is far less likely you will see this on Discovery because they show shows about motorcycles, and still less likely on History because, when not showing shows about Hitler, they show shows about UFOs; TLC is right out!):
In the beginning, which was probably around 13 billion years ago, membranes were vibrating. These membranes exist at a more basic level than atoms, electrons, and even quarks. At first we thought they were strings, but it turns out that the strings are woven together into a kind of fabric which we call membranes. Now we really can't see the membranes, but they seem to fit well into some mathematical formulas we worked out.
At any rate, the membranes were vibrating and then, by completely random chance, two of them happened to touch each other. When they did, our universe began in a singularity we call the Big Bang. Now, even though we call it a Bang, there wasn't really an explosion, but all the matter that exists in our universe today sprang into existence at that singularity and then the universe started expanding at an extraordinarily rapid rate, which sort of looks like an explosion but not really. In fact, the universe is still expanding today because of the great amount of energy that was released in the Big Bang.
Because of all the energy released in the Big Bang, things were really hot, so hot that the photons which make up light kept bouncing off the electrons and positrons and the other particles that were bouncing around and could not escape, so things were dark. It took several minutes for the universe to expand far enough and cool down enough for light to move freely through the particle soup. At that point, if human beings had existed and could have survived the excessive heat—and had there really been anything to see—we would have been able to see stuff because, you know, our eyes respond to light.
Eventually, because of gravity, the matter that was formed in the Big Bang, mainly hydrogen, coalesced and formed dust clouds and eventually stars. Lots of these stars exploded (and I mean real explosions this time, called supernovas) making heavier elements like helium, lithium, carbon, oxygen, and iron. Then, there was more coalescing of these heavier elements and more stars formed and eventually planets, too.
On one very non-special planet in a very non-special part of the universe (to paraphrase Carl Sagan) it was cool enough for liquid water to form. Then there were volcanoes that erupted. Those volcanoes, along with even more volcanic activity under this non-special planet's crust, forced land up out of the water. You can still see this happening on the big island of Hawaii.
Somehow (we're still not sure exactly how) carbon mixed with some other elements, molecules called proteins developed, and these, somehow, came together and formed the first molecular life on a very non-special planet in a very non-special part of the universe. I mean, hell, what with all those other universes in the "multiverse" springing into and out of existence by random chance, life had to happen sometime simply because of the law of averages.
Anyway, these simple life forms developed in the water because, you know, liquid water is required to support life as we know it. Eventually, this simple life, somehow, developed new features like gills and fins and eyes and decided to keep them because they were useful. Other innovations were dropped because they were not useful, like the human appendix which, though it is not used, has actually been retained and sometimes has to be removed.
Eventually, this aquatic life figured that it would be beneficial to its survival (i.e. the passing on of its genetic material) to venture onto land. These new land animals (we're not sure how plants got there) continued to evolve new features, one of the more interesting of which is sex. We figure sex developed mainly for the passing on of genetic material. The pleasure and intimacy of sex evolved in order to make it more pleasurable to pass on said genetic material (although we still see single-cell organisms asexually passing on their genetic material without much complaining that it isn't fun and having zero chance of going extinct within the next five billion years).
At any rate, these land animals eventually evolved, somehow, into ape-like creatures which then evolved into modern apes and, in parallel, into human beings. We know this because humans share as much as 90-some percent of their genetic material with apes. Interestingly enough, these human things (and apes and land and water) are made up of the same elements that were created by those exploding stars billions of years ago so, like, we and the stars are made out of the same stuff (to paraphrase Carl Sagan).
Here is a parallel account (slightly edited) that you won't see on the Science, National Geographic, Discovery, and History channels (and definitely not TLC!) unless they're showing a show about how it was all made up and Jesus was really married to Mary Magdalene, and oh, by the way, Jesus was a liberal social reformer who wasn't really concerned with religion and who was just a generally nice guy without all the hang-ups about guilt and sin and stuff that you read about in the Bible, and oh, by the way, who couldn't have raised himself from the dead because that would be, like, a miracle or something and with all our scientific knowledge we know that miracles are impossible:
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.
And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.
And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. And God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the third day.
And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. And God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.
And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. And God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.
And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping things, and beasts of the earth after their kind: and it was so. And God saw that it was good.
And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.
And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.
Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.
Comparing these two accounts, we find that they share much in common: First, the universe has a beginning—a revolutionary idea to the scientific world of the early 20th century. In addition, light was separated from darkness shortly after the beginning; there is a sun, moon, and stars; dry land appeared out of the water; aquatic life appeared before land animals; man was the last to arrive on the scene and was, in fact, made from the same stuff as the earth.
However, the two accounts approach the universe from two completely different perspectives. And I must admit, I find the biblical perspective more satisfying than the scientific.
Now, my lack of satisfaction with science has absolutely nothing to do with the goofy Christian-fundamentalist notion that God really created the universe in six 24-hour periods. Why should it have taken God 6 days or 13 billion years? Why should it have taken God any time at all? Let's not forget that time is a thing created by God and that God is eternal, meaning literally that he exists outside of time. For God, there is no past and no future and not really a present. Past, present, and future are ways in which humans perceive the passage of time. We are, after all, time-bound creatures. But because he is not bound by time, asking how long it took God to do anything is a meaningless question. It makes just as much sense to ask what God was doing all that time before he created the universe.
Neither does my lack of satisfaction have anything to do with an objection to the just-as-goofy atheist-fundamentalist notion that science is superior to religion and philosophy, and that with science we can come to a complete understanding of the universe without reliance on silly, ancient "superstition." While I do object to such a position and believe that those who hold it are full of crap, I do accept that science can be a worthwhile pursuit. For example, the flush toilet is an amazing invention; without an understanding of gravity, designing a flush toilet would not be possible. From a religious perspective, we can gain a limited knowledge of God's existence and of his nature by studying his creation; e.g. all the stuff that exists had to come from somewhere, he is a personal deity who made decisions about how to put together his creation, etc. (see Romans 1:20 and Peter Kreeft).
But I digress.
What I find that science lacks is meaning. Because of the way it is structured, science can never assign meaning to what it discovers. Observation and experimentation are important and can explain how, and, like the ancients believed, can be tools for acquiring wisdom. But they can never answer the most basic question that humans ask: Why? When it attempts to answer why, science typically plays the random chance card; i.e. our universe exists because the odds finally played out. If it helps us to understand how the universe works by using chance as a mathematical construct (such as in quantum physics), then fine. But no one really finds random chance a satisfying answer to the meaning of the universe, whether they would admit it or not. Even Einstein refused to believe that God would "play dice" with the universe.
How does the old saying go? Scientists will one day scale the mountain of human knowledge only to find a group of theologians who have been sitting at the summit for thousands of years. This statement is a truism, but what makes something a truism is that it is true. Here's a practical example: Astrophysics has, in the last hundred years, determined that 1) the universe in fact has a beginning, 2) light literally was separated from darkness in the first few minutes after the Big Bang, and 3) man is made up of the same stuff that makes up the rest of the universe. The Hebrews put these ideas in writing three thousand years ago. Science can explain to us how these things happened, but as to why?—the Hebrews wrote that down, too.