I'm pretty sure you meant "abiogenesis" not "biogenensis". And as far as believing whatever makes you feel good regardless the evidence, sure, if you care more about how you feel about you than what is actually true. I don't understand why you have any emotional attachment to ideas about how life began anyways. You may look in wonder at the process or the world around us, but why would you be emotionally attached to any argument? Either it is true or it isn't. Right?

The problem with your argument is that you are comparing the amount of evidence for evolution, which is overwhelming, and evidence for creationism, which is nonexistent. One is a scientific theory that is part of the foundation for modern biology and the other is religious woowoo that has no basis in reality.

I call Poe.

Of course one CAN, but the issue is whether or not one would be justified in that belief. But acknowledging ambiguity is not a belief, and prefering to view life as created isn't a belief, either.

I think everyone in the room facepalmed here.

I think everyone in the room face-concreted here (that is, the repeated bashing of one's head against a solid concrete wall, bemoaning the existence of such monumental stupidity).

Ah-hahahaha!

Ha!

Whoo.

It's the apparent luxury of the incurious that they never have to consider what they assert.

Hmmm, I was actually so preoccupied with the stupidity in the third post that I missed the OP. But, now that you mention it.

I'm not in here!!!

I'm guessing these are superhuman, microscope-videotape wielding, excruciatingly bored scientists that traveled back in time.

Okay, science isn't just real time observation. That's a strawman.

Oh, a thousand thanks for that one. That's gold.

This is really only a problem in debate, where the audience is guaranteed to not understand the format, let alone the rules of engagement. I think this is the main reason why William Lane Craig can appear to win so many debates against people who know better, and are much smarter than he is. They're unprepared for the fact that their audience is mostly unfamiliar with how thinking works.

Again, I don't think it's easy to find people who have considered these concepts to the point of any reasonable conclusion. "Supernatural" is obviously one of my favourites (properly eviscerated by todangst), because it's the epitome of expressing knowledge in ignorance. But so much attention is paid to debates on this issue that people in general can become confused as to what makes a valid point, instead of a popular point. In fact, valid points may fall by the wayside in the majority of cases, because they're so obvious as to be unspectacular!

I'm sorry if my earlier sarcasm (God admitting his own non-existence) was misunderstood. I actually posted my original comment because the statement "Believe in God?  We can fix that" intrigued me. I consider myself a fairly open-minded individual and if I were shown that my belief in God is detrimental I would abandon it immediately. I realize that the people on this site are probably used to creationists frantically quoting un-researched facts and Pascal's wager. I'm not here to do that though. I am legitimately interested in being "converted" to an atheistic viewpoint if my current view is unacceptable. However the existence of God is inherently philosophical rather than scientific so comparing the existence of God to the existence of orbiting teapots isn't a fair comparison. And in response to the statement "Theism is so confused as to what it even means to say 'God exists'" I would say that while there is much disagreement about what it means to say "God exists" there is little confusion. Muslims have a very definite concept of who Allah is but differ from Christians who have there own concept of God. I personally am not confused at all about who God is. I admit that I don't know everything there is to know about it but I wouldn't say I'm confused.

I believe in God primarily because I think its good to have a source of hope for the future. Theists allow for belief, without scientific proof, in God and what He promises. Humanism demands observation before something can be accepted (God isn't believed in because He hasn't been observed). Humanism also provides hope for the future. Humanism can be summarized in this way, “men have but one life to lead… human happiness is its own justification and requires no sanction or support from supernatural sources … [which] does not exist; and that human beings… can build an enduring citadel of peace and beauty upon this earth.” (Corliss Lamont, The Philosophy of Humanism, 14). Humanism sounds attractive to me but its promise of hope, human beings achieving utopia, has never been observed and therefore should not be accepted according to its standards of acceptable truth.

So is my faith in God unacceptable philosophically and why?

Humanism expresses hope that human society can progressively improve towards some ideal state. The ideal state is a target, which may be overly optimistic, but does not represent anything inherently or logically impossible. 

We do observe progressive changes in many aspects of human society, which include many improvements, at least in the judgement of many, so in contemplating the prospect that this improvement in ability to fight diseases, in knowledge, in standards of ethics and morality, such as elimination of slavery, rights for women and minorities, and so on, we are not being irrational. Whatever your opinion on the overall progress we see, the fact is that there has been considerable change over time in human society, with many things changing in a more or less consistent direction. This means that the overall state of human society at the end of each decade or century has never been observed before, so your argument just does not apply to such a process.

The possibility of reaching something we could describe as a state much improved over current conditions cannot be criticized  on the grounds that we have never observed such a state before makes no more sense than saying it is not an 'acceptable truth' that we could build a higher building or faster aircraft than has ever existed before, on the grounds we have never seen it before.

The proposition is that an observed process may continue, and that we should aim to do what we can to assist the process, not remotely analogous to the assertion of the eternal existence of something infinite, that has never been unambiguously directly observed. It would be a slightly better analogy if you were proposing that God will come into existence at some future time, but we see no particular evidence that any lesser version of a God entity exists and is growing into some such ultimate form.

If you envisage God as the Creator of the totality of existence, that truly is logically absurd, because that would require God to create himself, something which certainly has never been observed. If you also assume God is infinite, that is also incoherent since we have certainly never observed anything infinite, indeed we could never observe such an attribute, and it is a questionable that the very idea of an identifiable entity with infinite extent makes any sort of sense. Proposing such an entity is pure speculation and against the evidence.

The alternative idea that God always existed is also total speculation. Whether some form of 'existence' always 'existed', or came into existence at some point, there is no logical or scientific justification for the primal or initial state of existence be any more than the nearest thing to nothing that we currently understand, 'empty' space, containing just a very low level of some form of energy. We don't have an actual detailed theory for what, if anything preceded the 'Big Bang' initial state of our known universe, but proposing that it required the prior existence of some greater entity, let alone an infinite sentient one, is absurd , since you then have the problem of proposing an even greater entity to explain that entity. This is infinitely more improbable than proposing that the initial state be literally the next thing to nothing, as envisaged under current scientific ideas.

Since we know that complex structure ultimately arises from simpler forms, as represented by the formation of atoms, stars and galaxies from the raw energy state of the primordial universe, or even the growth of an adult human being from a single cell, there is also absolutely no logical necessity for God, and the nature of God is contrary to anything we have ever observed, so it is utterly incoherent.

There are actually some decent apologists who come on here. Their arguments are all pretty wacky, but I guess that's apologetics for you.

I wouldn't go so far as to say "unacceptable" in any absolute sense. It's a bit disjointed and incoherent.

That's if you believe that ontology can be solved philosophically, or by a more successful method than the scientific. Philosophically, you'd have trouble demonstrating a specific god, much less gods in general. Empirically, there are no gods, so ...

Can you describe God?

That's believing that it's good to have a source of hope for the future, though. That's not a positive belief in God. You'd just like to have hope for the future. I have hope for the future, but no gods. Does that seem odd to you?

You're mixing belief and hope in strange ways, here. If you want to know what is true, do you need to hope? No; hope has nothing to do with truth. So if you want to know the truth more than you want to hope, then you might change your beliefs (I don't mean you specifically -- that was the general "you&quot. But if hope is more important than truth, then don't worry about it.

Philosophically, you have an entity that escapes definition BY definition, inhabits a realm of non-existence (the non-physical), omnis itself into irrelevance (omnipotent, omniscient, omniwhatever), and never shows up ever.

So philosophically and realistically you have some difficulties. But you should try describing God, and see how difficult it becomes to do so in a coherent way.