intelligent less likely to believe in god, page-138

Unfortunately, evidence of where we evolved from is not always there for us to see everyday. One obvious example of evolution at work is dog breeding: a 65kg black Rottweiler and a 5 kg light tan coloured Chihuaha are the same species, totally different morphologically but with the exact same genes. This, is the early stage evolution, and through continued breeding and inbreeding and selecting out unusual characteristics (which are the result of random mutations) you can evetually have a new species ie one that is not capable of breeding with its original ancestry line. Small changes in characteristics which are selected for by a breeder or in nature by survival will continue that charscteristic through generations - so evolution is a slow and gradual change driven by survival of random small gene mutations.

But to understand evolution better you need to do your own research, and its not that hard, but it does take some delving and reading. Many people will give up at that point, turn on the TV (and watch John Edwards or other such show with touches of the supernatural) or open a New Idea and turn to the Astrology page, all harmless stuff and not too challenging. They will see something in nature and go WOW thats amazing, there must be a reason for that or a mysterious force involved! Well there could be but the scientist will check that event over and over and see if it is real or is repeatable before saying WOW. Otherwise it is just anecdote which sadly has meaningless meaning.

Do a web search - there's plenty of good succint presentations of how and why evolution made us what we are. Once you do your research, you soon realise that science may not have all the answers to the mysteries out there, but it is working on the more productively, than is religion.