It's only circular reasoning if you ignore the mathematical model of evolution. Evolution is simply that your chances of picking a red ball from a jar increases

It's only circular reasoning if you ignore the mathematical model of evolution. Evolution is simply that your chances of picking a red ball from a jar increases proportionally to the number of red balls in the jar. What you're saying is that "but why did you pick that specific ball, what were the factors at play?". I say "probability", and you call it circular reasoning. You expect me to explain the physical forces at play that pushed forward a specific ball on the top when you filled the jar, and made it collide with your fingers, and your brain's reasoning chain to pick the first ball that you touched, so you pick that one. But, basically, you can't. It's impossible because 1) we can't time travel. 2) we can't stop the universe and examine all of its properties. We work with the mathematical model we have and expect everything to work aligned with it. "Why do certain monkey species have holes in their bellies?". You can reason about that question, you can even come up with some answers, but it would be impossible to prove due to our universe's observability constraints. But the mathematical model works, it even works beyond our physical realm (e.g. it works to solve mathematical problems). And no, it will never explain why certain monkeys have holes in their bellies. That's an entirely different domain of causal analysis.