So in not "knowing" leaves you to believe their could be a God. It takes as much faith to believe our ancestors were a form of mucus.
You use the word "potential" it shows the very probability both in religion and in science.
I definitely agree that species evolve.
yes, i leave room to reform my hypothesis, as any scientific hypothesis does (or should). after new data is received that counters your data/theory, then you must reformulate to account for the new data. until then, my hypothesis remains. i should also say that nothing is ever proven in science, we can only fail to disprove (not the same thing). until i see evidence/data that signifies that my idea of atheism is disproved, then as of now, it has failed to have been disproved.
that goes to say it does not take faith by any means to believe that we evolved from 'mucus' as you say (i take it you meant prokaryotes and archaebacteria) because that has failed to have been disproved. molecular and dna evidence paint a clear picture of how life began as 'simple' organisms and crawled to the complexity of the many species we have today.
