Your last sentence with the question mark------in other words, one has to make a "leap of faith" to do away with the question mark and accept that explanation.
Ummm, no. You took my reply way too literally.
Since I opened it by essentially saying 'I'm no expert', I just casually offered that up as a possible scenario. The definitive answer may be available with some googling, or maybe not. At the present time, I'm not motivated to research it, I've got enough on my plate for an old retired guy
LG4NB made a valid observation:
both god belief and big bang acknowledge human endeavor but incapacity to comprehend infinity.
I don't think we can comprehend all of it at the present time, maybe never - like the song lyrics above - it is a mystery. So there will be a leap of faith somewhere along the line for all of us. Right now, scientists and the Big Bang story sounds better to me than the creator story, but as I said earlier - no debate from me, whatever works for you in dealing with this mystery is fine by me.
I will comment on the Pascal argument - I find it tough to accept that any creator with such powers would accept someone that said 'I believe', only because they thought it was a 'slam-dunk' over 'not believing'. That does not sound like 'true belief' to me, only fear.
If a slave is afraid of the consequences of killing his cruel master, because he might get 'caught', is it fair to say he 'loves' his master?
If there is a creator, I suspect they'd be able to see through that one. I also suspect that they would be 'proud' that I am trying to use the brain they gave me to contemplate this stuff.
-ERD50