Some of the species we see today may not be as capable as their ancestors were, but they are not extinct because they have learned some way to compensate. There are blind fish that live deep in the ocean. Their blindness isn't much of a handicap because there isn't much light down there anyway, so they survive. It is easy to see how one who doesn't understand the process might think that the cumulative effects of small changes from eons of microevolution could result in macroevolution. But microevolution removes genes from the gene pool.
Macroevolution requires adding new genes with special capability.
You can't get more of anything by removing some of it. In the 20th century we have learned many things about genetics, thermodynamics, probability, and information theory that weren't known when Darwin developed his theory. These new discoveries give abundant evidence that lower forms of life can't evolve into higher forms. In the 19th century, Darwin could be excused for thinking that what he saw on the Galapagos Islands could explain how life appeared on Earth. Today there is no excuse.