Pat, I do equate gut feelings with intuitions, at least moral intuitions. Yes, they evolved, and they are the result of processes experience. Sometimes they give us good directions, but in other cases they don’t. In some cases we have to rely on gut/intuition because there is no time to critically reflect on the situaiton. But when we do have such time, I suggest always checking our intuitions in the light of clear reasoning and factual evidence.