"Best" evidence for evolution.

My favorite piece of evidence for evolution is the nested hierarchical pattern that produces the phylogenic tree. There is no process known (including "common designers") that explains this except evolution.Now, the theory of evolution is a theory about the mechanism for this evolution. The appearance of new variations (no called "genetic mutations") has been observed. That, based on physical and inheritable characteristics, some organisms will reproduce more than other has also been observed. And the analogy of animal and plant breeding shows that such selection can produce large differences from the original ancestral population. In fact, there is no known mechanism that would prevent very large changes from occurring. Now this may be "foundational" in the sense that this was a large part of Darwin's reasoning.So, we have evidence that evolution has occurred (like the phylogenic tree), and we have evidence that there is a workable mechanism.This to me is the best evidence for evolution.

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Speaking personally, I find few things more awesome than contemplating this vast and majestic process of evolution, the ebb and flow of successive biotas through geological time. Creationists and others who cannot for ideological or religious reasons accept the fact of evolution miss out a great deal, and are left with a claustrophobic little universe in which nothing happens and nothing changes.
-- M. Alan Kazlev

When people say that, they are referring to precise, logical proofs as in mathematics. In that case, since science is an inductive enterprise, there cannot be any of the precise logical proofs found in mathematics. But, then, those proofs only work when the premises are assumed to be true. Since there is always some doubt about the premises, then I guess nothing is actually every really proved in mathematics, logic, or philosophy, either.On the other hand, when people talk about "proof" in science, they mean, in the words of Stephen Jay Gould, "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent." In that case, very few scientific theories have been "proven" as thoroughly as the theory of evolution.- I dunno. I think that the single nested hierarchy of the species not only sums up evolution pretty well, but it, alone, is one of the most powerful single pieces of evidence for it, in my opinion anyway. In fact, much of the other evidence for evolution is really evidence when it is compared to the standard phylogenic tree.- That certainly is good evidence for one piece of the theory. The phylogenic tree is good evidence for common descent; the nylon eating bacteria is good evidence for new, beneficial traits arising from random mutations, and the peppered moth observations are good evidence for natural selection.-Remind me again what is so hard to grasp about the theory?

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An atheist doesn't have to be someone who thinks he has a proof that there can't be a god. He only has to be someone who believes that the evidence on the God question is at a similar level to the evidence on the werewolf question. -- John McCarthy