I know a fair amount about the history of this, because I took Physical Geology just a couple of years before plate tectonics was announced. The opposition to continental drift as based on the lack of a mechanism making it possible. Most geologists believed it happened; they just didn't know how. My class presented all the known supporting evidence (of which there was a lot).
Continental drift accounted for a lot of data, but didn't explain what was going on. Science was correct to be agnostic about a hypothesis that appeared to defy physics.
I don't spend a lot of time arguing about word usage, because words don't change facts on the ground. If you don't approve someone's use of the term apologetics, that's fine with me. I merely described what I think is going on. Anti-evolutionists throw up a huge smoke screen of arguments from consequence and arguments from misquotation to hide the fact that all available evidence is compatible with common descent.
I have found the scientific response to continental drift to be instructive in terms of how science deals with controversies. When scientism adherents fall back on the “most scientists believe” argument, it rings hollow with me.
Again I ask you to please look at #185 and let us know what science has been overlooked or disregarded.
Some Wikipedia notes on Continental Drift and the scientific method.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_drift
One of the main problems with Wegener’s theory was that he believed that the continents “plowed” through the rocks of the ocean basins. Most geologists did not believe that this could be possible. In fact, the biggest objection to Wegener was that he did not have an acceptable theory of the forces that caused the continents to drift. He also ignored counter-arguments and evidence contrary to his theory and seemed too willing to interpret ambiguous evidence as being favorable to his theory.[4] For their part, the geologists ignored Wegener’s copious body of evidence, allowing their adherence to a theory to override the actual data, when the scientific method would seem to demand the reverse approach.
....snip....
However, acceptance was gradual. Nowadays it is universally supported; but even in 1977 a textbook could write the relatively weak: “a poll of geologists now would probably show a substantial majority who favor the idea of drift” and devote a section to a serious consideration of the objections to the theory.[6]