Comment: Nate...

How many times of proving a theory correct does it take before it's "fact"?

Let's take a 1000' core of sedimentary layers from the ocean.
1) start at the deepest layer. This is obviously the oldest layer, right?

2) examine the fossil remains of the coccolithophores (very common single celled critters that lived in the ocean) in a sample from every foot of the core, for example, starting in the oldest or bottom most interval. See pics of some of these beautiful fossils: http://www.bugware.com/gallery.html

3) We then identify the many different species in each layer. As we traverse to younger layers, we see obvious changes in the morphology of most of the species. At some points, we'll stop seeing some of the species... they went extinct and no longer were living in the water. In other layers, we find species that we had not seen before, they had evolved into different forms. We document very carefully the occurences of all species in the cores.

4) Next, go to a different place nearby, take another core, examine the fossils. You'll find the same occurrences in the same relative positions.

5) Take hundreds more cores all over the world. Virutally the same patterns of the same species will occur in every core.

So the evolution of these critters is documented time after time after time, literally thousands of times by hundreds of different scientists.

There is more unbiased evidence of evolution than many of the other things that that you accept as fact... but because of the taboo nature of evolution, many choose to say it's just a theory?

Again, how many times of proving a theory correct does it take before it's "fact"?