The hypotheses of Erasmus Darwin was replaced by lamarckism, which was replaced by Darwinism, which was replaced by neo-darwinism, which undoubtedly will be replaced by something else, and maybe not in our lifetime.
I am not emotionally involved in the outcome because it doesn't affect my Christian faith. However, I think that resorting to censorship to control the advent of new ideas is a little extreme.
there is nothing "new" about ID: it is a recapitulation of the old watchmaker argument - at least 200 years old, and STILL lacking any positive evidence, definition of mechanism, predictive value, or falsification criteria after all that time.
Careful on the big words...they hurt my eyes:). I'm not affected at all because like you, it doesn't affect my Christian faith. You're right, something will come along again to replace other things. The things about dinosaurs that I learned as a kid have completely changed, that's for sure.
...and the cartoonish misrepresentations of science march on...
No, sorry, you have grossly distorted the actual history of evolutionary biology.
The primary distortion is the common creationist misrepresentation which pretends that every so many years, science has to completely throw out old theories and "replace" them with entirely new ones, and that all you have to do is wait for current theories to be found "wrong" as well. This is false.
Instead, what happens the great majority of the time is that older versions of theories are *augmented* with new refinements, which make them continually more complete and accurate than ever.
Let's take your distortion as an example:
The hypotheses of Erasmus Darwin
Yes, Erasmus Darwin was one of the early scientists who conceived of an evolutionary origin of species from one or more first forms, instead of "separate creation" for each species or "kind". However, this was just an idea and he suggested no specific mechanisms for this notion, it hardly rose even to the level of "hypothesis" in the scientific sense. In 1802 he wrote the verse:
Organic life beneath the shoreless wavesThis is *still* an accurate (and poetic) description of modern evolutionary biology's position on the rise of modern life forms from microscopic beginnings ("spheric glass" refers to early microscope lenses). So it's disingenuous for you to say it has been "replaced" by anything which came afterwards.
Was born and nurs'd in ocean's pearly caves;
First forms minute, unseen by spheric glass,
Move on the mud, or pierce the watery mass;
These, as successive generations bloom,
New powers acquire and larger limbs assume;
Whence countless groups of vegetation spring,
And breathing realms of fin and feet and wing.
was replaced by lamarckism,
Wrong. Even Lamarck's attempts to envision a mechanism by which evolution might proceed was no "replacement" for Erasmus Darwin's idea of common descent via modification, it was a hypothesis about how that might have occurred.
which was replaced by Darwinism,
Wrong again. You make it sound as if Lamarckism had been widely adopted as the accepted theory of evolution, and then Darwin's explanation came along and kicked it out. This is not the case. Lamarckism -- and indeed the concept of evolutionary common descent in general -- was widely discussed and debated in the early 1800's, but had never been accepted as the dominant paradigm.
Even if it had, "Darwinism" would not have been a subsequent "replacement" of Lamarckism, it would have been a modification of only one of its tenets. Lamarck actually got most of his hypothesis correct. The place where he went astray was to propose that variation arose within individuals (i.e. acquired during their lifetimes) and then passed on to their children. Darwin correctly held that instead variation is born into individuals as variations which *depart* from that of their parents. The rest of the Lamarckian model was and still is accurate.
which was replaced by neo-darwinism,
This is the biggest lie in your account. Neo-Darwinism in no way "replaces" original Darwinism, it *expands* on it by adding subsequent discoveries which were unknown in Darwin's time, such as the behavior of DNA -- DNA was discovered much later. But all this subsequent addition of knowledge to the original core of Darwin's theory has only *validated* Darwin, not refuted or replaced him. I can't think of a single thing which Darwin put into "Origin of Species" which has actually had to be "replaced".
Indeed, offhand I can think of only one idea he had that turned out to be mistaken, and even that was still half right. He postulated that the brilliant colors of male butterflies was shaped via sexual selection by female butterflies. Actually, research has discovered that it *is* due to sexual selection, but by other *male* butterflies (it's how they recognize each other and is what triggers their territorial fight response in order to protect their access to females). Butterfly coloration (as Darwin realized) is also shaped by other factors, of course, such as predator recognition, protective camouflage, warning colors, etc. But female butterflies for the most part will "mate" with anything which does the "mating dance" in the right way and has the right pheremones.
which undoubtedly will be replaced by something else, and maybe not in our lifetime.
Dream on. Evolutionary biology will no doubt add even more to its body of knowledge, and some portions of it will be adjusted accordingly, but it is so extremely and overwhelmingly supported by such massive volumes of evidence and research that the odds of it actually being "replaced" in any large part are quite close to zero. Not even Darwin's original writings have needed "replacing" yet, they have held up incredibly well for a 150-year old theory.
In contrast, Newton's Laws of Motion have needed extensive modification and "special case" exceptions to account for relativity and quantum physics. And even then, this actually refutes the creationist notion of science having to "clean house" and throw out old accepted theories -- while Newton's Laws have had to be augmented with new knowledge about relativity and QM, they were never "replaced" or "thrown out" or found to be "wrong" in the sense of 100% incorrect. Newton's Laws are *still* correct for the appropriate applications (i.e. objects and speeds on the human scale).