What is heaven?

[genkaus]

A few points:

I think the word "gap" in the expression "God of the gaps" is euphemistic.

The simple fact is, science can't claim to know where life comes from. It doesn't know.

If I'm walking down the road, and there's a little gap in the sidewalk, ok, no biggie, I can just hop over that and be on my way.

But if I'm walking down the road and all of a sudden there's a thousand mile canyon in my path, that's a big deal.

Why is the origin of life considered a "gap"? I say it's a huge canyon. It means science can't explain a huge, fundamental question. Calling it a "gap" is like pretending science can answer a question that it can't.

What makes you think that science can't answer the question. As a matter of fact, science does have an answer. We may not know enough to say for certain that it is the correct answer, but it is the most rational one out there.

The reality is that it's the type of knowledge gap/canyon that problematizes the entire conception that the universe and existence is a self-generating phenomenon and that life can be reduced to purely chemical phenomenon.

No, it doesn't. The conception of the universe and reduction of life to a chemical phenomenon would be independent problems.

Next point: That doesn't "prove God exists." Gaps, and even canyons, in scientific knowledge don't prove anything except maybe something about the limits of scientific knowledge.

No, they don't tell you the limits of scientofic knowledge, rather the direction in which it needs to grow.

The point is more like this: There isn't a clear atheistic answer for the origin of life. There are guesses, hopes, dreams, speculations - not answers.

Yes, there is. We simply don't like to push it because we are not certain of it yet.

There's a clear theistic answer for the origin of life. Why automatically push a theistic answer off the table when atheists don't have a better one?

Because it's bullshit. We don't need to have the correct answer to know that you have the wrong one.

You don't have to read every children's coloring book on the market to know that Shakespeare is more sophisticated than all of them put together.

Yes, you do. Otherwise you can't "know" it. You can only speculate that it is more sophisticated..

It's your faith in the "reality you live in" that allows you to know this.

I don't need faith in the "reality I live in". My reason doesn't allow any space for faith.