Evolutionary timescales

One of my colleagues complained today that my blog has been "all about money" lately, and needed a dose of science :-)

Below is a comment I posted to biophysicist Carson Chow's blog recently:

"The process of evolution has been experimentally verified without question. But has anyone shown that humans could have evolved from complex molecules in the time allowed? (e.g., age of the universe = 10 Gyr?) I think the best claim a creationist (or "intelligent design" enthusiast or whatever) could make is that, sure, evolution works, but without a hidden push every now and then there has not been enough time to achieve the observed complexity of the biological world. Since we can't really estimate the necessary timescales from what we currently know, we can't rule out this possibility.

I once asked a well-known evolutionary biologist at Harvard about this, and was stunned to realize he didn't understand my question. He gave me a BS answer about the observed mutation rate being fast enough to explain the observed complexity of life, but I don't see how anyone could justify that.

Of course Occam's razor suggests that evolution alone is capable of producing humans in the allotted time, but that is not yet verifiable scientifically."

Does anyone want to make a counter-claim? What scientific progress will be necessary for us to be very confident in a quantitative sense that genetic drift + natural selection are enough to explain the incredibly optimized eyes, brains, leaves, tendrils, web-spinners, etc. in the natural world? How about to conclude that 10^{100} years is more than enough time? (Remember, we have to start with molecules and understand the timescales required to get to simple cells (but with genetic coding), then to multicellular beasts, and eventually to Angelina Jolie :-)