God created the world and everything in it in 6 days. After each day, God would look at what he made and declare it to be “good.” Some interesting points about creation include: the light on the first day was different from the light on the 4th day; God created the seed bearing fruit and vegetables for mankind to eat, which shows that man was originally intended to be vegetarian; there was water located above and below the sky; (many say that the dinosaurs must have been created on the sixth day, since that’s when God created the wild animals).
Everything was created in preparation for man. Mankind is the crowning glory of God's creation. God consulted the whole Trinity about creating man in his image and likeness, saying "let Us make man in Our Image and Likeness."
Traditionally, Catholics believe that the angels were created in God’s likeness only, so this would make mankind to be higher than the angels. According to traditional understanding, the highest of the angels, Lucifer, rebelled. He didn't want anyone (Adam and Eve) being higher than him! He got many angels in heaven to join him in his rebellion but they were all cast out of heaven. On being cast down, he stopped at earth get Adam and Eve to join with him against God. He could not kill Adam and Eve, because then they would die and be with God in heaven. So he got them to sin (the Original Sin) and in this way join him in hell. Adam and Eve could save themselves by repenting, which is probably what they did.
As punishment for their sin, God intensified the labor pains of the woman, and made Adam (whose job it was to guard the garden) to work really hard for a living. God promised the serpent (in very cryptic language) that he (the devil) and the woman (Mary) would be enemies, and that Mary’s "seed" (Jesus) would defeat the serpent (that’s Lucifer). When God promised this, He basically revealed his plan to save mankind. For the rest of the bible, we see how sin keeps spreading from one generation to another, as everyone is born with original sin. Adam’s son Cain killed Abel, which shows that sin is in the system to stay. Lamech had 2 wives and killed a boy. BTW, Adam and Eve’s children probably married one another, as God allowed that in the beginning in order for the world to become populated. The bible says that Adam and Eve had "many sons and daughters." After a few generations, God saw that sin had spread so rapidly that the whole earth was filled with evil. God was so grieved that he made man! He decided to flood the whole earth; but he spared Noah’s family since Noah was the only good man left. 2 of every kind (i.e. species) went on the ark. He then put an age cap of 120 years on mankind because He noticed that the longer man was living, the more sinful his heart was becoming. So,both the flood and the age cap were done not to stop sin (because that was impossible) but to SLOW down the rapid spread of sin.
After the flood, Noah and his family got off the arc, which had come to rest on Mt. Ararat (which is in Turkey). Many claim to have found the arc. God told Noah to be fruitful and multiply, which is what he told Adam and Eve. This shows us that God is creating the world again—Creation take II. Noah then made wine from grapes and got drunk, which mirrors how Adam and Eve sinned with the fruit at the beginning of Creation. This shows that sin keeps spreading. Since God knows that sin will keep spreading, He decided to slow down the spread of sin even more by giving Noah the power to perform capital punishment. Also, now, for the first time in the bible, God allowed humans to eat meat (what else was there to eat after the Flood had destroyed all the plants?). Noah’s son Ham sins against him, which mirrors how Cain sinned at the first Creation. This shows how sin is relentless—it is in the system to stay. Noah cursed Ham’s son Canaan (whose descendants are portrayed as the bad guys in the rest of the bible), while he blessed Shem and Japheth (who would find blessing through Shem).
Sin kept spreading and spreading until men committed the sin of pride in building a huge tower (of Babel) in order to make their name great. God noticed how rapidly sin was spreading, so he decided to SLOW down the spread of sin even more--He scattered mankind all over the world (which at that stage was probably still one continent) and confused their languages. Now, speaking different languages, they would not be able to conspire together to sin. God's basic plan was to eventually be born on earth. So he started to form a holy nation into which he would be born. After many years of sinning, a man called Abram was born a descendent of Shem (one of Noah's 3 sons...the son who was "blessed" by Noah). Since the world is going to be blessed through Abram, we might expect good things from him in the chapters to come.