How did human thought escape the influence of evolution? Where did it come from?
Of course! It's like any other product of the human intellect, like a song, or a play, or a screwdriver, or a gun, or a model made from Play-Doh. These things serve human purposes, which may or may not pertain to human survival.
Are you claiming that human intelligence is anything other than "matter-based"?
The only changes that can be shaped by Darwinian evolution are the changes that are encoded in the genes (and some associated structures). Human thought simply isn't passed along that way! It's passed along in books, it's passed along in arguments, it's passed along with facial expressions, it's passed along on the dinner table, it's passed along with a birch switch.
Human thought (culture) does change over time--in that loose sense it "evolves". But that evolution has nothing to do with the Darwinian evolution that nettles your sensibilities. Crucially, its transmission doesn't depend on one's own survival, or on the survival of one's children. That's how it escapes Darwinian evolution.
Are you claiming that human intelligence is anything other than "matter-based"?
No. I sincerely believe that all human thought is the result of the material workings of the physical brain. But to claim that such meaning is an intrinsic, inheritable property of the matter is as foolish as asserting that tomorrow's New York Times lies latent in a jar of ink. There is matter and energy, and there is (as you seem to have forgotten) the pattern in which the matter and energy are arranged. I've seen no evidence that anything more is necessary to explain the human mind.