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I don't have a problem with what you might call "the uneducated" in this area because not all people are that much into science. What I do have a problem with is when religious or political figures deny it without either do at least some research or because they feel a need to be p.c. Let me give you an example of the latter.
Most I'm seeing everyone telling you the same thing. People without the technology or knowledge to look at human origins usually draw wrong conclusions and often fall back on traditional explanations for origins. Re: god(s) made the sky blue like this, god(s) forged lightning like this, god(s) made humans like this.
Thanda, this is a non-fruitful line of discussion. Your initial questions were related to to actual questions about evolutionary theory and is more constructive. The word unnatural is ambiguous. I would say that science, from the very beginning has made discoveries that nobody knew about before (tiny invisible micro-organisms cause disease, planets circle the sun and earth is rotating, all objects fall at the same acceleration regardless of weight, stars are other suns, continents move etc. These things are not intuitively obvious, but in what way are these conclusions unnatural? They are well established by careful observation and testing and there is no difficulty at all in many religious beliefs in accepting these findings as they have no negative impact on that philosophy or theology. Eastern religions treat evolution the same way, evolution of the spirit through animal/plant/human/angelic or Boddhisatva stages has been accepted in these religions for several thousand years (and many aboriginal traditions also accept this) and the discovery of actual physical transformation of the material body by genetic evolution through descent adds an unexpected but welcome addition to this form of theology. To an Indian the teaching of evolutionary theory had had no more import than any other teaching in the science class (like water boils at 100 C). Its just as natural. Frankly I had to work harder to accept the plausibility of atomism, the fact that the earth is round and rotates around the sun than to accept the plausibility of evolution (I was 6 and reading a colorful encyclopedia of science for kids). It is quite clear that what seems natural to believe and not natural to believe depends on the culture one lives in. In a culture that already believes that the universe (in its current incarnation) is at least 4 billion years old, infinite in extent, contain many many inhabited worlds with different non-human but sentient beings, is just one of many other realms that are universes in their own right with their own flow of time, where earth and these worlds manifest living things in multiple forms in accordance with their proclivities that reincarnate again and again, that the earth periodically goes through epoch changing cataclysms that wipe out most life only to re-emerge again in new forms in the next epoch...the shift from such a structure of thought to the modern scientific structure with its 13 billion year old universe (and possible multiverse), 4 billion year old earth, emergence of life through evolution, great extinctions etc. requires no psychological or emotional effort at all (the rational effort of looking at the evidence is still there). There is a reason why modern science and technology has so quickly permeated all of East and South Asia but has difficulty in getting a toehold in the Islamic world, it is because even a very religious Hindu, Buddhist, Confucian and Daoist sees nothing in the findings of physics, chemistry, biology (including evolution, cosmology etc.) that requires her to abandon anything of her faith. In fact its childishly simple to incorporate the understanding of evolution as a dual outcome of chance mutation and orderly natural selection as yet another example of the duet of yin-yang of Dao, Purusa-Prakriti of Hinduism, or the interactions of the aggregates through dependent co-arising in Buddhism.
You are mistaking what I am saying. A culture that believes in evolution of a spirit (very roughly) through multiple births finds it plausible to believe in the evolution of life-form through genetic evolution as well. If the science convinces them, they will readily believe it.
Its not unnatural to think that we came from another animal. There is nothing about that which is unnatural. What you mean to say is intuitive. And even on that front I would argue that intuition and logic is exactly what brought us to that conclusion. From a time of extremely limited information our perspective may have not called for an intuitive understanding of evolution but as we learned more and more about the world around us it does.
How do you know it is "his existence" and not "their existence" or "none exist"? And how do you know that "God is interested in being proven to quench people's curiosity"?
This is where Buddhism has a strength, namely that if something is beyond observation and/or experience, regardless as to whether it's in any of their scriptures or any other's, they should not be assumed. Even the most basic teachings can be questioned and disagreed with if experience/observation takes us in the opposite direction.
However, this is not to say you're wrong as I have no way, nor even any desire, to somehow prove you're wrong. But my point above is to sorta throw a speed-bump in front of you to bring to your attention about how easy it is to have assumptions that we accepted as fact whereas there's really no indication they are facts. To me, it's better to say "I believe in X, but I'm not going to the point of saying X is correct", or take my oft repeated statement of "I don't know". But then, ya probably don't wanna be like me-- and I can understand that.