That's why they didn't say that it *had* been "proven correct". They said it had been rigorously tested. And it has.
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Yes you are right in this place. But in many other articles the authors treat evolution as if it has in fact proven true. That's what I was reacting to and those were the people I was calling stupid. (Not you and certainly not God!)
The thing that gets me about evolution though, is how efficient it is. For it to create the complexity of life around us, you have to have (1) an amazing mutation rate and (2) an environment accomodating enough to allow enough organisms survive but also be (3) harsh enough to shave away suboptimal organisms. The environment also has to (4) change smoothly enough for organisms to adapt over time or contain enough varied organisms to survive any severe changes, like the meteors that killed the dinosaurs.
I know you have to condition all this on the fact that we exist -- if we didnt' exist, we wouldn't be around to discuss evolution. And there are gazillions of other planets which have not given rise to life.
But intuitively it just seems as though 5 billion years and a large number of experimental creatures is not enough time or fodder to get mechanisms as complex as the eye or liver or even a little virus. And the more I learn about the world, like about the bacteria that thrive in hot ocean vents, the mysteries of quantum physics, the weirdness of relativity, I really have to start wondering. I'm not religious, but the world is such a magnificent place you really have to believe there is a God, if only to act as a proxy to explain the amazing array of "stuff" around us.
Plus anyone who has done genetic programming (GP) knows what a pain in the ass it is to get any interesting behavior. :D
But then contrast GP to the game of Life developed by Dr. Conway which can actually give rise to quite complex behaviors including Turing machines which can compute anything. The trick is that they start with the right set of rules...