Yes, you're right. As we've pointed out many times, theories aren't literally "proven," but if they're accepted by scientists as useful models, they must explain the existing evidence, and they must survive experimental efforts to dis-prove them. You might think of the burden more accurately as the burden of coming forward with the evidence to support the theory, which is why Darwin amassed as much evidence as he could in his day and reported it in his published work. And of course, in the 150 years since, mountains of additional evidence have been piled up, all consistent with the theory. Are there areas where the evidence is thin? Sure. This is inevitable in any endeavour to find evidence about past events. But evolution does very well in meeting its burden of proof, as any respectable theory must.
The problem in that regard is with the "creation scientists," who have zero credible evidence. Their so-called theory is not a scientific theory at all.
I must say Patrick, you certainly have a Clintonian ability to weave a dozen lies into a couple of sentences.
Darwin collected evidence which supported his theory and ignored evidence which disproved it. That is why he ignored the platypus and did not talk about the most remarkable characteristic of the bat, the sonar. There was no answer for either so he swept that under the rug. He also had a fantastic ability for charlatanism, of seeming to prove something which in fact disproved his theory.
he cannot prove it, but please believe him.
All these causes taken conjointly, must have tended to make the geological record extremely imperfect, and will to a large extent explain why we do not find interminable varieties, connecting together all the extinct and existing forms of life by the finest graduated steps.
He cannot prove it but it's true:
We should not be able to recognise a species as the parent of any one or more species if we were to examine them ever so closely, unless we likewise possessed many of the intermediate links between their past or parent and present states; and these many links we could hardly ever expect to discover, owing to the imperfection of the geological record.
There is no proof but I believe I am correct:
it deserves especial notice that the more important objections relate to questions on which we are confessedly ignorant; nor do we know how ignorant we are. We do not know all the possible transitional gradations between the simplest and the most perfect organs; it cannot be pretended that we know all the varied means of Distribution during the long lapse of years, or that we know how imperfect the Geological Record is. Grave as these several difficulties are, in my judgment
In the future I will be proven right (like Miss Cleo?):
Species and groups of species, which are called aberrant, and which may fancifully be called living fossils, will aid us in forming a picture of the ancient forms of life. Embryology will reveal to us the structure, in some degree obscured, of the prototypes of each great class.
Contradicting what he said before of living fossils:
Judging from the past, we may safely infer that not one living species will transmit its unaltered likeness to a distant futurity.
Both sides prove me right:
it follows, that the amount of organic change in the fossils of consecutive formations probably serves as a fair measure of the lapse of actual time. A number of species, however, keeping in a body might remain for a long period unchanged, whilst within this same period, several of these species, by migrating into new countries and coming into competition with foreign associates, might become modified; so that we must not overrate the accuracy of organic change as a measure of time.
The future again:
In the distant future I see open fields for far more important researches.
If you have read through a few hundred pages of the above drivel, you will buy the garbage I am going to ask you to swallow now:
He who will go thus far, if he find on finishing this treatise that large bodies of facts, otherwise inexplicable, can be explained by the theory of descent, ought not to hesitate to go further, and to admit that a structure even as perfect as the eye of an eagle might be formed by natural selection, although in this case he does not know any of the transitional grades. His reason ought to conquer his imagination; though I have felt the difficulty far too keenly to be surprised at any degree of hesitation in extending the principle of natural selection to such startling lengths. from: Origin of the Species, Chapter 6