In all three cases the true believers have maintained adamantly that the empirical evidence supported their beliefs.
...and the true predictions about what would be found when genomes were sequenced...
I have to admit, I wasn't aware the Darwin wrote extensively about genomes, what with modern genetics not having been developed yet...
Perhaps you were referring to Darwin's predictions of the gazillions of intermediate fossils that would be discovered in the future. Doh!
Speaking of predictions, do you want to conduct a study together of how many times evolutionists have been surprised by a new discovery which did match what they were predicting and forced them to go back and come up with a revised dogma?
It's my understanding that Freudianism isn't scientific for one of the same reasons that ID isn't: it's not falsifiable:
Everything is either concave or covex
So anything we dream about has something to do with sex
Marxism, on the other hand actually made predictions, and has been falsified (eg, the American proletariat is hardly at slave-like levels of misery)
In both cases, there are still believers, but their number is shrinking, and there are no generally-accepted empirical data points supporting Freud or Marx.
The ToE is flourishing. Just in the last 20 years there have been major fossil finds (eg, feathered dinos, the sequence leading to whales), and also major genetic work (eg sequencing the human, chimp and dog genomes). None of this work, which could have damaged or even falsified the ToE, has done so. The results were, AFAIK always, in line with predictions of the theory.
I have to admit, I wasn't aware the Darwin wrote extensively about genomes, what with modern genetics not having been developed yet...
I don't know exactly what he said on the subject, but the basic idea is an immediate consequence of his theory, and is independent of the actual mechanism of inheritence: namely, that the genetic details should track the family tree of related animals or plants. This is now considered strong evidence in favor of common descent.
Perhaps you were referring to Darwin's predictions of the gazillions of intermediate fossils that would be discovered in the future. Doh!
No, I said genetic evidence, but ol' Charlie was (Doh! indeed) right again. There really were very few fossils known in his time - remember that archeopteryx wasn't found until a few years after "Origin" was published. We now have smooth amphibian-reptile-mammal sequences, the hoofed animal-whale sequence, lots of human ancestors, and, what would especially have pleased Darwin, Precambrian fossils.
Speaking of predictions, do you want to conduct a study together of how many times evolutionists have been surprised by a new discovery which did match what they were predicting and forced them to go back and come up with a revised dogma?
"dogma"? be more precise. AFAIK, the only real change (an addition) to Darwin's *theory* was the inclusion of neutral genetic drift. Gradualism vs. punk-eek is in "Origin". Modern genetic theory has made the mechanism of mutation and inheritence more precise, but didn't actually change the theory.
What has changed with the data is the phylogenetic tree. Eg, was archeopteryx an ancestor or an uncle of modern birds? Are molluscs more closely related to annelid worms or to arthropods or to what? and so forth. None of the changes to the tree have been major - eg when Archy was the only know intermediate between dinos and birds, it was placed in the direct line of descent; when older bird fossils were found, it was assumed to be a surviving ancestral species; now with the modern Chinese discoveries, it's position in the dino-bird subtree is more accurately known.
Note that at no time was anything other than one type of dino and the birds affected; no adjustment to the mammal tree, for example.
It's precisely what one would expect as more data is found - fossils are classified, put in the tree, and the tree may have to be readjusted a bit.