How long does it take to evolve?

This reminds me of a debate about medical ethics in Canada once upon a time, where there was some sort of movement to leave the decision of medical homicide up to (loose quotation ) "the ones that are qualified to make the decision....doctors) (sic).
While a doctor may be the one to diagnose someone as braindead, the decision what to do afterwards has nothing to do with medicine.

I believe the defenders of intelligent design deserve our gratitude for challenging a scientific world view that owes some of the passion displayed by its adherents precisely to the fact that it is thought to liberate us from religion. That world view is ripe for displacement....

Those who have seriously criticized these arguments have certainly shown that there are ways to resist the design conclusion; but the general force of the negative part of the intelligent design positionskepticism about the likelihood of the orthodox reductive view, given the available evidencedoes not appear to me to have been destroyed in these exchanges. At least, the question should be regarded as open. To anyone interested in the basis of this judgment, I can only recommend a careful reading of some of the leading advocates on both sides of the issuewith special attention to what has been established by the critics of intelligent design. Whatever one may think about the possibility of a designer, the prevailing doctrinethat the appearance of life from dead matter and its evolution through accidental mutation and natural selection to its present forms has involved nothing but the operation of physical lawcannot be regarded as unassailable. It is an assumption governing the scientific project rather than a well-confirmed scientific hypothesis.My skepticism is not based on religious belief, or on a belief in any definite alternative. It is just a belief that the available scientific evidence, in spite of the consensus of scientific opinion, does not in this matter rationally require us to subordinate the incredulity of common sense. That is especially true with regard to the origin of life.

― Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False