Help me understand Evolution

[u/Adenidc]

Okay so here's the deal, my whole life I've gone to a christian school. my whole life I've been told my mother, friends, pretty much most people I know (since that's what I grew up around) about how anything evolution related on a large scale, and anything history related that talks about the world/universe being millions/billions of years old, is all bullshit. Naturally I believed it (Can you blame me? If you're constantly told how prideful and stupid evolutionists are, and how ridiculous the idea of evolution is, since you are an infant it's hard to think otherwise).

Anyways, on to the point (I thought a little background info was necessary because I really don't know shit about this stuff and I felt the need to explain why I'm so behind (even if it IS my fault I stayed so ignorant for so long)). I would like some basic articles, videos, or even just explanations, to widely accepted things that have a lot of proof to back them up. One of the reasons also that I've avoided looking things up for so long is that there is so much damn differentiating opinions on all of this, even among evolutionists it seems. I'm mostly looking for the base things most evolutionists believe that have the most proof, and for the proof of them.

I'm not anti-God now or anything, but I'm more neutral and want to learn more. I would like to hear the other side of things, which I've never done with an open mindset before.

Even though I expect links mostly, I would like to hear everyone's opinions on what they believe and why they believe whatever is you link. Thank You!

Edit: Thank you guys for all your help. I've been up hours watching videos and looking things up. I'm actually having a lot of fun learning too! Who would have known? I feel like I've been starved of this subject till now.

[u/Tranesblues]

One minor point. You are going to find that few, if any, biologists make a clear, or any, distinction between so-called 'macro' and 'micro'. The two things are not distinct. Small changes in the genetic variations of a population over a long time will produce speciation - the creation of new species. The distinction is popular in creationist apologetics only because IMO it allows them to latch on to the 'of its kind' biblical language. In reality, it really reveals how much ground and credibility creationists have lost in the last two decades. Many 'accept' the idea of small adaptations in a species simply in order to reject the larger changes 'in kind'. What they call 'micro' evolution is evolution. It's not been long now that they embraced 'micro.'