A. Believing that without any sort of conscious intention, "nothing" suddenly exploded on its own and became the unfathomably vast universe we observe today, then cooled and thru sheer utterly profound luck somehow produced not only simple life forms but conscious, intelligent civilizations able to comprehend it all.

B. Maybe there's something else going on here.

B

Edit: I take you are not a Christian? Because Christian theology views faith as a virtue, but here you seem to be assuming the opposite view.

When ever I read a question like the above I feel pretty confident that I'm not going to give the desired answer.

I don't prescribe to any one particular religion or dogmatic beliefs. I try to be open minded but my intuition tells me we're not here by chance alone. Just sayin...

B.

Heh has inductive reasoning ever been successful in convincing an atheist that God exists?

Yes.

try this one -

A. believing in some sense the universe has always existed and its natural state includes self-organizational principals that make intelligent life inevitable

B. believing an omniscient creator exists separately from the universe and somehow created it from "nothing" specifically so intelligent life would emerge to keep him company

I think A is possible, because of the evidence to support it, and I think any open minded person would also be open to the possibility that something else is going on. Until you at least have a hypothesis as to what that might be, and some evidence to support it, it's just a wondering though so I think it requires a greater act of 'faith' to go with B, especially in the face of all the evidence to support A.


Would it make any difference if evidence were provided to show how little you can trust your intuition and how it causes us to make mistakes, especially wrt to decision making, all the time?

Some things are and some things are not.

Nothing that isn't can't be.

Well, it is pretty stupid to think "nothing" can explode. Explosions are specific physical phenomena that necessitates "something". However, B is so broad that I'm fairly sure it contains a lot of stupid stuff too. I'll go for a tie.

I can only suggest you study better theoretical approaches to how the universe came to be, such as the big bang theory. It was, for the record, originally proposed by George Lemaître - a catholic priest.

So what in your opinion is that something else?

Intuition: "An impression that something might be the case".

Intuition explains exactly nothing. The world works the way it works and the only honest answer as to how it came about is; we don't know.
No faith required. What is your question again?

What requires more courage?

being a:

A. Thespian

B. Lesbian

A x B = Ellen Page

You forgot equestrian,
so for you the answer is pedestrian.

I really don't "know" exactly what that "other" might be, but to me anything makes more sense than proposition A, so I'm still trying to figure out exactly what that may be. I realize that there might be evidence of A, more likely theories if anything, however I have a hard time wrapping my head around how its possible.

How was there once nothing, then BANG, everything? I don't see how anyone can agree that actually makes sense. Has that ever been observed it nature? Oh wait that would be impossible to duplicate in a lab because even a vacuum contains space, and space didn't exist before the big bang right? What caused it to begin 10-15 billion years ago, and not 5 years ago? Or a trillion years ago? What determined how many atoms were going to come into existence? Why did "nothing" suddenly become 10^80 atoms and not 500? Why is there a finite amount of matter at all?

How is it that one can look at a machine and realize it was created, but not look at the machine called the human body and realize the same? Isn't there a disconnect there?

Although I can't prove it, a more likely theory is that there at least one dimension that exists outside of time, matter and space, from which the material universe was born. Why is that so inconceivable? Because we can't observe it? Scientists once "observed" that the sun revolved around the earth. In fact scientists are constantly changing their view of things from one generation to the other.

Imagine if there were a civilization of intelligent sea creatures that lived deep beneath the ocean. Some would ponder their existence and say, "the sea is all there is". Other's would say "I'm not so sure, there must be something else". Then the former would say "Well there's no proof so the sea is all there is". I know,ridiculous analogy but you know what I mean. We're in our own little bubble of limited understanding just like fish in a bowl trying to figure out how the hell they got there.

I haven't really heard that there exists anything but speculation in physics on how the universe came to be.

The big bang theory which you are trying (but failing) to put into words is not an explanation for how the universe came to exist, it is a theory that gives a timeline for the universe from a very early point in its existence up untill the present, and which has also been been strongly supported by later discoveries (chief of which is cosmic background radiation).

Or we can take out all of the ridiculous parts of your alternative that you tossed in there to make the alternative look silly.


B. believing in a creator

You do realize that Christian theology claims that the universe was created out of nothing, right?

B ainec

Pretty sure not every Christian agrees with creation ex nihilo. I doubt most even know what it proposes.

It's still B though.

I was just using a standard Christian theistic position as a specific example to parallel the specificity of (A.) in the OP. If you think Christianity is ridiculous good for you.

B, however Pascal's Wager offers infinite pot odds so I guess A

Sure, but that is the traditional view.