>We are animals with evolved abilities like all creatures on this planet.

Here is where your reasoning starts to fail. (Although, if I'm being honest, it was actually earlier when you said you were wary of "reason", by which I presume you actually meant logic, but let's skip that issue for the moment.)

We are animals with evolved abilities unlike any other creature on this planet. This alone doesn't distinguish us. Every species of creature has some evolved abilities which are different from all other species: this is part and parcel of being a distinct species. But with humans it goes beyond that, because of the specific ability we evolved to have, which is demonstrably unique in result.

>Reason is an evolved ability that did not somehow leap past biological barriers & provide us with a god-like tool to unlock the mysteries of the universe.

Returning to that earlier point, then: reason is an evolved ability that leaps past biological barriers and provides is with a tool to unlock the mysteries of the universe. These mysteries become less mysterious therefor. Reason need not be "god-like", in fact it cannot be God-like, but overcoming biological (and other physical) barriers is exactly what it is for, and what it accomplishes. But (and this is the most important issue in all of philosophy, the key to unlocking all of the things about human behavior which are not merely biological abilities but the capacity to go beyond biological and physical barriers) reason is not logic. It is something more than that. It is, among other things, the ability to conceive of logic, and it must be greater than logic, it must transcend mathematics and deduction and even induction (or any other formal system) in order to recognize, discover, invent, or develop formal systems like logic, which you have been taught to identify and describe as reason. That, the limitations of logic, is what you are raling against, what you are wary of, and you are using reasoning to do so.

>The lion could be said to be using the faculty in a simplistic manner while we are using it in a far more complex way.

The lion uses no reason nor logic. The lion is logic, with no reason. It's genes are logic, the physics of the nucleotides and the proteins they "encode" is logic, the entire universe is logic, limited by mathematical laws although we know not how. But lions (nor whales, elephants, dogs, birds, apes, or fungi) have no consciousness, they do not have reasoning, they are unaware of the existence of biology or logic. They have no reason to be, they engage in no reasoning, and they are incapable of deciding how they should behave, they merely exist and do whatever their biochemistry causes them to do. Humans really are different. You can say that reason is an illusion, that consciousness is merely an unsolved engineering problem or a gift from god or a ground state of the universe, what you're really doing is denying the evidence. Humans are different. We aren't just a different kind of life, we are a different kind of matter, even though our biological existence is the same as any other life form and our atoms are the same as any other object. Our consciousness isn't a fiction, our language is not a logical code, and our morality is not simply social norms.

>I step back from saying evolution is true; I stick with evolution is highly plausible

You remind me of Richard Dawkins, stepping back from saying God isn't true, and sticking with God is merely implausible. Socrates' showed that accepting uncertainty is a necessary aspect of reasoning. Descartes showed that doubt is a fundamental premise of consciousness. But sooner or later we have to man up and accept the fact that being unsure if humans are moral creatures (and that God does not exist!) is a disastrous and unproductive pretense.

>as animals we think to assist survival of the species.

Animals don't do that, though. If they thought at all (they do not, though the neurological impulses in their brain is only teleologically, not physically, different from the neural impulses which are our thoughts) they would only consider, care about, or assist their own survival, and seek to be the definition of the species rather than merely a single creature doomed to die. Evolution is undeniable, the mechanism of natural selection is so absolutely true and unavoidable that even God, if It existed, could not prevent it from occurring. But knowing evolution is true (beyond the notion of causation itself, a mere fiction in comparison) does not mean that what some person or expert (or ALL people and experts, if we can imagine such a universal consensus) claims the implications of evolution are is likewise true.

>We are animals. With limited evolved abilities.

We have that one evolved ability which has no limit. We can imagine things that aren't real, and consider whether they should be real, and devise methods to make them real. Just because we are still animals doesn't mean we are still just animals. Consciousness isn't just sense perception with a larger neural network, it is a very specific and particular (and also holistic) perception (to be explicit and give it a name, it is self-determination and theory of mind) that isn't limited to senses (or sense) with a larger neural network. 😉

>We are in the present world situation partly because we deny our evolved limitations.

We are in the present world situation entirely because we have the ability to ignore our evolved limitations. The real problem is that we deny that, as you are doing. If we were just animals like any other, we wouldn't be in this mess. And if we accept the moral responsibility of reason, instead of trying to avoid it by confusing reason with "logic", we can work our way out of this mess, and any other situation we might find ourselves in.

> We are a lion starving to death at the water hole because plausibility is not certainty.

What is the water, in your metaphor?

We are apes trapped in a tar pit, unable to figure a way out because plausibility is as close to certainty as anything beyond cogito ergo sum ever gets. We cannot overcome metaphysical uncertainty (whether there is anything beyond our perceptions) and we cannot overcome epistemic uncertainty (whether there is anything to our perceptions) and we need to stop using that as an excuse for remaining stuck in this damned tar pit. 🤓