Posted on 02/14/2004 6:55:32 PM PST by yonif
Edited on 02/14/2004 7:04:03 PM PST by Sidebar Moderator. [history]
British archaeologists believed they have finally located the long-lost remnants of HMS Beagle, the ship which took Charles Darwin on the voyage during which he formulated the theory of evolution, a report says.
The fate of the Beagle, which carried Darwin for five years from 1851, has remained a mystery for more than a century.
However, according to The Observer, archaeologists using advanced ground-penetrating radar think they have found it buried under mud in a river estuary in Essex, south-east England.
"I am quietly confident we have found the Beagle," marine archaeologist Robert Prescott of Scotland's St Andrews University told the newspaper.
The radar image shows a ship similar in size to the Beagle - which was used as a customs boat after Darwin's voyage - lying under three metres of mud near a long-abandoned dock, Prescott said.
"Most of the upper part of the ship may have gone, but we have the lower part and hull, and who knows what remnants of Darwin's trip may still lie down there," he said.
"That is why this ship is so intriguing."
Darwin's voyage took him on a lengthy surveying trip of South America and the Galapagos Islands.
From notes he took about differences in birds and animal life, Darwin concluded that species change gradually over time through a process of natural selection, which benefits those best adapted to their environment.
His ideas were published in 1859 in On the Origin of Species, attracting vehement criticism from Christians before eventually becoming accepted as one of the most important scientific theories in history.
And who know what those remants have evolved to!
I smell the stuff of a good horror flick in this. Hmm... what to do, what to do...
Yeah, why not. I'm an excellent typist.
That's just not true according to Darwin's own testimony n his autobiography (a very frank document which Darwin wrote as a private account for his own family) and in some of his correspondence.
Darwin was a Christian while aboard the Beagle (1831-36), and also at the time he formulated his views about evolution (1837), and when he first wrote them out in extended form (1842), but he was no longer a Christian at least by the time his daughter Annie died (1851) and probably a few years before that. Darwin himself describes his transition from belief to agnosticism (he claims he never became an atheist) as gradual and almost insensible, but in the end quite definite and complete.
And I've read that grasses and trees existed before the sun did. People dream up the damndest stuff, don't they?
The creationoid slime machine just keeps on cranking out the same old garbage. Time for a little truth:
Creationist Makes Racist Speech
The quote that follows proves nothing at all about race; but it demonstrates that racism isn't something that suddenly began with the theory of evolution (Darwin published "Origin of Species" one year after the Lincoln-Douglas debates).
I do not question Mr. Lincoln's conscientious belief that the negro was made his equal, and hence is his brother; but for my own part, I do not regard the negro as my equal, and positively deny that he is my brother or any kin to me whatever. ... Now, I do not believe that the Almighty ever intended the negro to be the equal of the white man. If he did, he has been a long time demonstrating the fact. For thousands of years the negro has been a race upon the earth, and during all that time, in all latitudes and climates, wherever he has wandered or been taken, he has been inferior to the race which he has there met. He belongs to an inferior race, and must always occupy an inferior position.Lincoln-Douglas Debates
The Voyage of the Beagle is one of the prize books in my collection; the edition I have is the handsome Wordsworth Classics softcover shown above. It is not just a priceless document of history's greatest scientific voyage, but a beautifully written and vivid tale of adventure, worthy of the best of Patrick O'Brian.
There was indeed a revival of scientific racism in the early decades of the 20th Century (stimulated, IMHO, by the historically unprecedented mass immigrations of the period). However your "always" is ludicrous and wildly false. When it was originally introduced, evolutionary theory UNDERCUT the scientific racism of the mid-Nineteenth Century, which in its most extreme forms was based on the claim that races were effectively separate species. IOW it was based on creationism. OTOH, in the last four or five decades, you can't point to any prominent evolutionary racists, whereas explicitly racist groups, such as the Klan or "Identity Christians" are creationist.
And to paraphrase you (if less cynically): No, I'm not saying that all creationists are racists, or even that most are, or even that a significant percentage are, or even that the doctrine of creation correctly understood is in any way racist by implication.
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