So many things wrong that need to be corrected, from binadub's post.
I take exception to the demand "show me one proof of evolution." Such a claim shows ignorance of science itself. You don't "prove" scientific theories. Show me one proof of gravity. You can't. You can show me something falls down, but that isn't proof of gravity. It's an obervation that things fall. Show me proof that germs cause disease. You can't do that either. You can at best show that there are specific kinds of germs present when people are sick. The "Theory of Gravity" is the explanation as to why things fall, and the "Germ Theory of Disease" is the explanation as to what causes disease. You can show ample evidence for these theories, but you can't prove them. Proof exists only in mathematics and formal logics. I can show specific mathematical correlations between mass and an objects attraction to that mass, I can use that information to predict the position of a planet, but that is only evidence for the existence of gravity, not proof.
There is no shortage of evidence for evolution, be it genetic, fossil, geographical distribution, or morphological. There is no shortage of predictions made by evolution that are accurate and useful. All of modern medicine is based on evolution; evolution predicts archeological findings, their locations, the strata they will be found in, as well as what features can be found in the fossils. To posit that life was "poofed" into existence is to claim that whatever "poofer" did the "poofing" wanted it to look exactly like life evolved gradually over hundreds of millions of years. This is no different from the line of reasoning that suggests the devil hid dinosaur bones to confuse us. It postulated a tricky and elusive wizard that made things look exactly like there was no wizard. An explanation that conveniently works on anything no matter how ironclad the evidence is.
Also, Stephen J. Gould did not "disagree" with darwinian evolution at all. Punctuated equilibrium was not meant to replace darwinian evolution, it was merely an inference of another pace evolution can take. Depending on circumstances life can evolve gradually, or it can evolve rapidly (such as after a mass extinction event, where numerous niches are suddenly open to be filled.) It's not a one or the other scenario, and Gould never intended it to be such. Gould was in fact extremely annoyed that creationists used his ideas to justify their beliefs when he could not disagree with them more.
Furthermore, evolution does not say anything about Matter or life coming from nothing. This claim is insane, and I don't know how somebody can say that and think they are being unbiased about evolution. The germ theory of disease must be wrong, because there is no evidence of higgs-boson particles. It'a a non-sequiter, they have nothing to do with one another. Where matter came from is a question for theoretical physicists, and has nothing to do with biology. Speciation has nothing to do with the origin of life. You know what macro-evolution requires? For imperfect replicators to exist, where they came from has no bearing on the theory or it's accuracy. Saying that the origin of matter is a problem for evolution shows that your beef is not with evolution per se, but rather a world view that renders gods redundant. Evolution simply becomes a "catch all" term that represents the epitome of this world view.
And also, art, math and religion didn't "suddenly" come about with civilization either. They all were gradually developed, even prior to civilization. What we think of as math today, did not exist five thousand years ago. Even things that we take for granted like a number system where our symbols do not physically represent the concept of a quantity, or the value of a symbol varying depending on it's place in a series of symbols, or even decimals, these are all relatively recent developments. For thousands of years only the most primitive and rudimentary of arithmetic and geometry existed. There are still primitive tribes that exist today that don't even have numbers. These things didn't just "suddenly" come about.
If somebody accepts micro-evolution, and they accept that the earth is old, then they accept macroevolution. The onus would be on them to explain why things suddenly "stop" evolving right before the genes of a population become so different that it forms a pre/post-zygotic barrier resulting in speciation, and why this wouldn't happen over an over again. The onus is on them to show what the immutable unchangeable "hippo" part of the "hippo" genome is, and why every other part of their genotype can change, and why that can have drastic effect on their phenotype (the physical appearance), but there must be some eternal "hippo" part of the gene that makes it a hippo, and forever a hippo. These things don't exist.
The Jehovah's Witness Wolf E. Lonnig (who the watchtower references whenever they need somebody with a degree in biology to say something about evolution, but they will never disclose that he is a witness,) tried to come up with some ridiculous theory of elastic genetics springing back to their original state. This was roundly derided and quickly dismissed (except by the ID community of course.) All he did was selectively breed plants to a produce a certain phenotype, and then slectively breed them back to the original phenotype. It was so transparent it was disgracefully bad, the Max Planck institute (where he worked) said they had nothing to do with the study, and Lonnig "retired" from the institute shortly there after. It was especially dumb that he used plants as an example of his elastic genetic "theory" (it wasn't a theory, even though he termed it one. It was a hypothesis, and a poor one at that.) Plants can evolve rapidly through a process called "polyploidy" that is completey irreversable, and definitely would not just "spring back" to what it used to be, namely because polyploidy adds chromosomes to the genome, and forces speciation within a single generation. It's widely observed, and often used in plant breeding. Any first year biology student would know this, which is why it was so ridiculous that he was using experiments using plants to "disprove" speciation.
Which leads to the next innacuracy. Evidence of speciation is abundant. I have a hard time finding a single accurate paragraph in that entire post. Take that as a lesson, Outsmartthesystem. The detractors of evolution largely rely on misinformation, inaccurate representations of the science, and just plain ignorance of the topic or science in general in order to make a case against evolution. They will frequently claim that they have studied the topic extensively, but then they tip their hand by saying something like "evolution can't explain where matter came from." Then you realize that no amount of evidence will convince them, because their problem isn't with evolution. Their problem is with a world that wasn't specifically formed by god, where humans aren't god's special little creation. Go read books by respected evolutionary biologists like Jerry Coyne or Richard Dawkins. They will be eye opening, and fascinating. I recomend "Why evolution is True," "the greatest show on Earth", or "The Ancestors Tale." It will be an immensely enlightening and fascinating journey.
