1. I believe my recommendation was to go to the biology primary literature section of a university library to see the sheer volume of research that has been done into evolution in the past nearly 150 years since Darwin published the first edition of "The Origin" (which, by the way to those who might be reading, evolutionary biologists do not regard as an infallible text, but merely a foundational text discussing and presenting the first iteration of very important ideas). I did not mean to imply that you were not at a university.

I don't recall using the word "proven" in my previous postings. I try to avoid that word. I prefer terms such as "rejection of the null hypothesis" or "supported" and so on. Evolutionary theory has been refined greatly and will continue to be refined. No, it can never be "proven", and few scientists would say such a thing. However, billions of individual observations over the years have supported and informed the tenants of evolutionary theory, and it seems to be substantially correct as a way of explaining the living world and its origins. You seem to be putting out the idea that intelligent design is a viable option to evolutionary theory. Well, not really. Much of ID is pseudo-intellectual flim flam with very little going for it. It doesn't help that ID advocates routinely ignore what evolutionary theory actually holds, rather than setting up and attacking straw men with no semblance of reality. On top of this, ID was what was rejected in favor of evolutionary theory. Much of "The Origin" is a detailing of how the living world just doesn't make much sense in the light of the ID of the time. Granted, you can use all sorts of intellectual gymnastics to make ID fit the living world, but you could do that with any idea. Heck, I could figure out a way of explaining all of nature as having resulted from Smurf excrement. Every time an inconvenient fact comes along, I would just modify the argument, or else (as in ID quite often) make it so fuzzy that there is no way of finding a fact that could possibly contradict it. Philosophically, this could be justified. True, and I will agree, philosophically, there is no basis to reject the idea that Zeus Almighty, Father of Gods and Men, created the universe as it is just miliseconds ago, but you have to admit that such an argument is rather unfulfilling. If the leap of faith you referred to went to refusing to believe such a thing to be a viable possibility, then yes, I think I would agree.

In any case, please don't see any of this as being condescending or angry. I don't mean to come across that way. This has been a pleasant discussion, and I wish you well, even if I don't agree with you.

Humans did not evolve from monkeys nor from apes. It is more accurate to say that humans and these organisms share common ancestors, with those common ancestors being more recent in the case of apes than in the case of monkeys. The same with protozoa. Modern protozoa and humans and monkeys share common ancestors in the far distant past. The same is true with all life on Earth (presumably) if you go back far enough. This is a subtle point that can be easily overlooked. Modern organisms did not evolve from each other, but from ancestors that were shared between each other at different points in life's history. That said, monkeys retain more characteristics of the common ancestor they share with us than do we. This is not to say, however, that we are more evolved, as that implies an inherent progressiveness to evolution that really is not necessarily so.

With all due respect, acceptance of evolutionary theory only requires a leap of faith if you don't know much about it. Study some basic texts to get yourself conversant with the basics. Then go to the nearest university library and peruse the literally millions of pages of research on various aspects of evolutionary biology in academic journals, and you will likely agree. As for the problems with inferential rather than observational science, we cannot directly observe individual electrons either. Does this mean that it is justifiable to believe that electrons don't exist, and that such phenomena as electricity are literally mediated by little demons? I don't think that religion is necessarily in conflict with science, but there is certainly a conflict between the universe that science describes and the universe described in fundamentalist readings of their basal documents. Genesis literally read presents an undeniably false description of the origins of the world, but not necessarily when read metaphorically. Science and religion are not the same, though they should both be studied and kept in mind. It is important to realize that religion and science seek to understand the universe and our place in it in very different ways, and it is not reasonable to attempt to understand each by the use of the lenses of the other. I cannot stress enough how important this is to keep in mind.