Interesting point, but you realized that NO life in any form existed until only a billion years ago. The first few billion were spent just getting the proper conditions for life to evolve (changing the atmosphere from a reducing one to an oxidizing one, etc.). Seems the time for such an amazing process to occur was shorter than you may think. I agree with your tagline, though. God could have used evolution and a process to create life as it is but I absolutely believe that man was made in God's image and so I don't know about the evolution from apes part.
What, exactly is meant by "man was made in God's image"?
Man did not evolve from the ape. The are on different branches of the evolutionary tree.
…I don't know about the evolution from apes part.
Can I offer food for thought? I've pondered this, and thought that perhaps our journey -- continuing journey, possibly -- through various cellular, primate and hominid stages, etc., IS in God's image, His way of revealing to us His own journey and therefore helping us to gradually understand ourselves and the paths we take to Godliness. Perhaps it is one manifestation of "eternal life." Certainly "heaven on earth" would be achievable if every one of us lived by the Ten Commandments and by resisting the Seven Deadly Sins alone; I have no doubt that a) God loves us and b) the Bible is a divine manual telling us how to thrive.
Lately, I've been thinking that there is a beautiful symmetry between essential Darwinism (species must adapt or perish) and God's laws to which we must adapt or surely perish -- societies that have no moral compunctions about murder, stealing, lying, etc., are doomed to destroy themselves.
One other thing that I think relates somehow. We are not born with innate knowledge of right and wrong -- primitive societies have without guilt or sense of sin, apparently, sacrificed and killed children in the name of pagan gods, engaged in adult-child sex, murdered in order to accomplish what they desire, etc. Also, life is not fair, and it never has been. Never, not ever, not in any species, not under any circumstances. A child is born with a cleft palate or a club foot, while his brother is born whole -- it is not fair, it just IS. Life is not fair and never has been.
YET every individual person born on this planet knows from the earliest consciousness the concept of fairness; a child knows that it's not fair if his sister gets a treat and he does not, or if he and his sister do something bad and he gets punished and his sister does not. A colorblind person who cannot see green cannot conceive the color green. A child born to cruel and abusive parents thinks it is normal and cannot conceive of any other normality. So how is it we all can conceive what is fair versus what is not, when life has never been fair?
This alone, to me, is proof of God -- we know what fairness is because once, somewhere, we caught a glimpse of it. Was that glimpse via God's image in which we are made? I have NO IDEA what the real significance of this is (!!) or how it ties to our natural history on this planet via God's miracles, but I think it carries a clue. I wonder if there is a connection between fairness and grace? Just tossing it out there, to get hairy!!
..."but you realized that NO life in any form existed until only a billion years ago."
You, sir or madame, are exploding your cover as you speak. Fossilized microorganisms from 3.5 billion years ago are well established.