The 98% of scientists that believe in evolution have a vested interest in their "belief" namely their tenure. You know what happens to scientists that challenge the doctrines don't you? No more pay-cheque 
Yes, they may lose their jobs. Going against a Theory supported by the entire field of biology tends to harm one's credibility. But hey, it isn't easy resisting outside pressure, which is why some of the greatest scientists who changed their fields faced staunch criticism and even abuse. People like Galileo, Darwin, and Einstein had to convince others, despite prevailing public and scientific opinions, that they were right. And they did, because their arguments had validity which convinced even those who opposed them.
Creationism is the remainder of what was once commonly accepted belief. It lingers even after being put to rest because some of those of religious faith refuse to accept that it is wrong.
If you know of evidence that irrefutably proves cross species evolution then please share it.
I can't provide you with irrefutable proof because there is no proof that you will accept. That doesn't mean that there isn't strong evidence which is only explicable through evolution. There is.
But for me, the existence of a phylogenetic tree based upon genes themselves is conclusive. Not only is there fossil evidence of creatures with functional features in a transitional state between dinosaur and avian, and aquatic and terrestrial life, the genes themselves support a branching model of common descent.
"WHY, if species have descended from other species by insensibly fine gradations, do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional forms? Why is not all nature in confusion instead of the species being, as we see them, well defined?
Innumerable transitional forms must have existed, why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth?
Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links?
Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory".(Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, pp. 172, 280)
Why indeed? Perhaps if you were to read the rest of the chapter in which he addresses the very questions you so selectively quote, you might find your answer...
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/origin/chapter6.html"To sum up, I believe that species come to be tolerably well-defined objects, and do not at any one period present an inextricable chaos of varying and intermediate links: firstly, because new varieties are very slowly formed, for variation is a very slow process, and natural selection can do nothing until favourable variations chance to occur, and until a place in the natural polity of the country can be better filled by some modification of some one or more of its inhabitants. And such new places will depend on slow changes of climate, or on the occasional immigration of new inhabitants, and, probably, in a still more important degree, on some of the old inhabitants becoming slowly modified, with the new forms thus produced and the old ones acting and reacting on each other. So that, in any one region and at any one time, we ought only to see a few species presenting slight modifications of structure in some degree permanent; and this assuredly we do see."
But also keep in mind that while Darwin's insight into evolution was revolutionary and astoundingly thorough, he wasn't right about every part of it. Darwin's initial foray isn't representative of modern thought.
Darwin said, quite rightly that there should be "innumerable transitional forms" As far as I know there have been found exactly ZERO.
Tiktaalik.
Another interesting quote from the man himself
“To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree.”
Yet again, you cite at a quote which you obviously haven't read in its original context, because you aren't actually researching Evolution itself. All you are doing is reading what the opposition presents you. In this case, those who provided you with the quote
deliberately omitted the rest of the paragraph:
"When it was first said that the sun stood still and the world turned round, the common sense of mankind declared the doctrine false; but the old saying of Vox populi, vox Dei, as every philosopher knows, cannot be trusted in science. Reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a simple and imperfect eye to one complex and perfect can be shown to exist, each grade being useful to its possessor, as is certainly the case; if further, the eye ever varies and the variations be inherited, as is likewise certainly the case; and if such variations should be useful to any animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, should not be considered as subversive of the theory. How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light, hardly concerns us more than how life itself originated; but I may remark that, as some of the lowest organisms, in which nerves cannot be detected, are capable of perceiving light, it does not seem impossible that certain sensitive elements in their sarcode should become aggregated and developed into nerves, endowed with this special sensibility."