It's more like,
Theist: "...so that's how the world began."
Atheist: "You have no evidence for that. Here's how all evidence that's thus far been discovered suggests the world began..."
Which is still a leap of faith for the atheist, considering there is a good deal of evidence for intelligent design, and none of the real (as opposed to the missing links, long used as indisputable evidence for mankind's evolution that have been determined to have been all ape, all man (albeit with conditions such as rickets that distort the bones), or a hoax (such as the one combining a human jawbone with an ape's skull, or the one that was found to have been derived from a single fragment of a pig's tooth)) evidence cannot be interpreted as evidence of intelligent design.
Ah, you're one of THOSE. Now, for convenience's sake I'll assume you're of the Christian strand of intelligent design. If not, correct me and I'll just let this whole post stand as information for others who are.
Ok, here's some evidence.
Cosmic microwave background radiation supports the Big Bang, as opposed to the literal interpretation of Genesis or any other religious text I'm aware of. I don't want to bother explaining all the evidence for the Solar System's formation, as I don't have the astrophysics background to argue it competently, but rest assured things didn't happen in the order given in the Bible, that's for sure. Note that plants cannot possibly have preceded the Sun, nor in fact could any life for reasons that should be obvious.
Transitional forms:
Tiktaalik is a transitional form between fish and amphibians, the oldest creature with a neck, and one displaying the characteristic bone arrangement in its limbs that all tetrapods share.
Archaeopteryx is a transitional form between dinosaurs and birds, once thought to be a fraud but later shown to be genuine.
Synapsid reptiles show clear evolutionary trends toward mammalian traits, including the presence of a single skull opening behind the eyes (the purpose of this being increased jaw musculature), development of mammalian posture (early reptiles had a more lizardlike stance), acquisition of heterodont teeth (meaning more than one kind of tooth; look at a fish or reptile, and note that in almost all cases the teeth are identical except for size), a transition from one type of jaw attachment to the skull that is not seen anywhere else in the fossil record, and so on. If you want to talk about humans specifically transitioning from apes, although I can't imagine what difference it really makes, as it ought to hold about as well for every known species and you'd need counter-evidence to suggest that humans are different, you've probably heard of
Australopithecenes, which are an intermediate form between apes and humans. Maybe that's not enough for you, so here's
Homo habilis, a link between Australopithecenes and humans.
Of course, you probably think that there still ought be more evidence for evolution than we've yet found in the fossil record, if it were true. Possibly you misunderstand the ridiculous odds against any particular creature being fossilized. Or maybe you misunderstand the rate at which transitional forms tend to be crowded out; once a given feature arises, it has a tendency to be optimized very fast, evolutionarily speaking, meaning there's a very short period of time between a stable population and a stable population of its evolutionary descendants.
Fortunately, though, there IS more evidence, found not in fossils but in living organisms. As an example, have you heard of the middle ear bones? Mammals have three, everyone else who has ears has 1. That 1 is the
stapes, which is derived from the
hyomandibula, which was originally used in fish as a means of jaw support, which was rendered unnecessary by changes in the skull during tetrapod evolution, but found use as a sound amplifier due to its proximity to the skull. Besides this logical conclusion as to the origin of the stapes, which you could always argue is just conjecture, it is stabilized by the stapedius muscle, which is connected to the
facial nerve instead of the
vestibulocochlear, which is the nerve that is otherwise associated with hearing. In fish, the facial nerve attaches to muscle surrounding the hyomandibula. There is similar evidence for
the other ear bones in mammals, and the
tongue.
Now. There is no reason for God to have done all this if he was just magicking things out of the air. There is no reason for anything to be the way it is, if God did anything other than wind up the Big Bang and let it run. And if God did that, then there's no real difference between Atheism and Theism in how you live your life, because whether God exists or not makes no difference, whatsoever.
So. Are we DONE with "the evidence for evolution isn't conclusive" bullshit?
EDIT: 9 new posts, I can understand that. Posting this, then I'll read them.