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Darwin's Beagle ship replica plan [for his 200th birthday]
BBC News ^ | 19 July 2006 | Staff

Posted on 07/19/2006 3:55:15 AM PDT by PatrickHenry

Plans are being drawn up to build a £3.3m working replica of the boat that took Charles Darwin around the world at Milford Haven in Pembrokeshire.

Fundraising for the project, which would mark the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth in 2009, is under way.

The aim is to built a seaworthy vessel identical to the HMS Beagle on the outside, but with a modern interior.

Darwin, who showed how natural selection could explain evolution, sailed on the Beagle between 1831-36.

Sitting opposite him on the expedition was mate and surveyor John Lort Stokes.

One of Stokes' descendents, Pembrokeshire farmer David Lort Philips, together with commercial yacht master Peter McGrath, have founded the Beagle Project Pembrokeshire.

Mr McGrath said the ship would look identical to the original Beagle on the outside but would have a 21st century interior with diesel auxiliary engines and generators.


Charles Darwin developed his early theories on board the Beagle

He said he hoped the fished vessel would inspire the scientists of the future and be used by researchers and scientists from across the world.

"Externally it will be exactly the same but we want it to do some serious scientific work and you would not want the crew living like they did in the 18th Century," he said.

The pair have spent three years putting their plans together and aim to raise the money through private and institutional investors along with public subscription.

"With all the Darwin 200 celebrations there is not one big project to focus the attention on," added Mr McGrath.

"I know the effect a square rigger has on young people - it's a jaw dropping site.

"But we do not want this just to be a replica - we want it to have genuine scientific benefits.

"We have started the fundraising. Construction will take 14 months and it has to be finished by early 2009.

"She will be built in Milford Haven and it will be her home. But what we want to do when she is built is visit the significant sights in Darwin's and the Beagle's life."

Researchers believe the original remains of the 27m-long Navy brig, that was sold for scrap in 1870, are embedded in a marsh near Potton Island in Essex.

Darwin, who published On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection in 1859, came fourth in a poll run by the BBC in 2002 to find the public's greatest Briton of all time.

His voyage on the Beagle allowed him to form the basis for much of his later work.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Philosophy
KEYWORDS: bilgebarge; birthofanotion; canardline; crevolist; fetish; garbagescow; godless; idolworship; notthissh1tagain; obsession; onetrickpony; pavlovian; poorwiddleluddites; shipoffools; spoof; voyageofthedamned; whocares
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To: Just mythoughts
"Now exactly how can the knower's of evolution not think they are superior to the Heavenly Father if they do not even believe He exists?"

I don't believe leprechauns exist. I don't feel superior to them.

How can one believe oneself to be superior to a nonexistent entity?

Perhaps you should read up on critical thinking.

241 posted on 07/19/2006 5:50:47 PM PDT by b_sharp (Why bother with a tagline? Even they eventually wear out! (Second Law of Taglines))
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To: Just mythoughts

Your post came off as very bitter.

I hope you are not like that.


242 posted on 07/19/2006 5:51:04 PM PDT by stands2reason (ANAGRAM for the day: Socialist twaddle == Tact is disallowed)
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To: tomzz
"Aside from being a ship of fools, evolution is a ship of ingrates. The victory over the adherents of these ideas was not achieved with super weapons, but was purchased with an ocean of American, British, Canadian, Australian, and Russian blood. Those people laid down their lives and asked very little in return other than that we conduct our own lives in such a manner as to occasionally justify the sacrafice. There is no rationial way in which adopting the same idiologies which were the foundations of the Nazi and fascist states may be construed as doing that."

Let's see. Darwin published Origin of Species in 1859. Hitler was born in 1889. Hitler, according to you, used some of the ToE to justify his hate. So if we adopt the ToE we adopt Nazism.

There is pretty major error in logic there Ted. Think you can find it?

243 posted on 07/19/2006 5:58:29 PM PDT by b_sharp (Why bother with a tagline? Even they eventually wear out! (Second Law of Taglines))
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To: b_sharp
Are you of the misbegotten opinion that if you can show Hitler believed in the Theory of Evolution, the observed phenomenon of Evolution and the observed mechanisms of mutation and selection/drift will just go away?

No. What I AM saying is that GIVEN the total lack of evidence for macroevolution or for any plausible mechanism for it, you must, when judging evolution and evolutionists, take into account the tens of millions of people who have died on account of doctrines which were clearly based upon evolutionist ideas. In other words, as pseudosciences go, evolutionism is a spectacularly dangerous and virulent one.

244 posted on 07/19/2006 5:58:38 PM PDT by tomzz
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To: Oztrich Boy
"And in some language that's English?"

Not that I could understand.

245 posted on 07/19/2006 6:01:05 PM PDT by b_sharp (Why bother with a tagline? Even they eventually wear out! (Second Law of Taglines))
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To: tomzz
GIVEN the total lack of evidence for macroevolution or for any plausible mechanism for it...

Totally false. Sorry.

Here is some evidence for you, complete with a transitional (which the creationist websites claim doesn't exist). Note its position in the chart which follows (hint--in the upper center):



Fossil: KNM-ER 3733

Site: Koobi Fora (Upper KBS tuff, area 104), Lake Turkana, Kenya (4, 1)

Discovered By: B. Ngeneo, 1975 (1)

Estimated Age of Fossil: 1.75 mya * determined by Stratigraphic, faunal, paleomagnetic & radiometric data (1, 4)

Species Name: Homo ergaster (1, 7, 8), Homo erectus (3, 4, 7), Homo erectus ergaster (25)

Gender: Female (species presumed to be sexually dimorphic) (1, 8)

Cranial Capacity: 850 cc (1, 3, 4)

Information: Tools found in same layer (8, 9). Found with KNM-ER 406 A. boisei (effectively eliminating single species hypothesis) (1)

Interpretation: Adult (based on cranial sutures, molar eruption and dental wear) (1)

See original source for notes:
Source: http://www.mos.org/evolution/fossils/fossilview.php?fid=33


Source: http://wwwrses.anu.edu.au/environment/eePages/eeDating/HumanEvol_info.html

246 posted on 07/19/2006 6:03:32 PM PDT by Coyoteman (I love the sound of beta decay in the morning!)
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To: Dimensio; Dixie Yooper
I fail to see what that would accomplish, given that you have ignored refutations to the false claims that you made in post #6.

I'm sure if DY is interested in the truth, he/she will respond.

247 posted on 07/19/2006 6:05:49 PM PDT by stands2reason (ANAGRAM for the day: Socialist twaddle == Tact is disallowed)
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To: tomzz

Stalin didn't kill that many evos.


248 posted on 07/19/2006 6:07:07 PM PDT by stands2reason (ANAGRAM for the day: Socialist twaddle == Tact is disallowed)
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To: tomzz

Stalin didn't kill that many evos.


249 posted on 07/19/2006 6:07:07 PM PDT by stands2reason (ANAGRAM for the day: Socialist twaddle == Tact is disallowed)
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To: Just mythoughts

Get it through your head that supporting evolution precludes believing in God.

Now, It is debatable whether being an evo precludes believing the Bible, but you confuse the Bible with the idea of God's existence.


250 posted on 07/19/2006 6:11:00 PM PDT by stands2reason (ANAGRAM for the day: Socialist twaddle == Tact is disallowed)
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To: Coyoteman
You're looking at that picture precisely the wrong way.

Recent DNA studies have eliminated the neanderthal as a plausible human ancestor because the genetic gap is simply too wide, and the neanderthal was the closest thing to a modern human amongst the hominids. All other hominids were further removed from us THAN the neanderthal, and that includes homo ergaster and all the rest. Neanderthal DNA is described as "about halfway between ours and that of a chimpanzee".

To be descended from something, at some point, you have to be able to interbreed with the something, and we could no more interbreed with neanderthals or any other hominids, than we could with horses or chickens. In fact the lack of crossbreeding was always a big mystery, and the DNA studies pretty much cleared the mystery up.

251 posted on 07/19/2006 6:12:44 PM PDT by tomzz
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To: stands2reason; tomzz
Stalin didn't kill that many evos.

But he did have Vavilov, the greatest Soviet geneticist (did fundamental work on the origins of crops) killed. Vavilov Institute of Plant Industry

Under Stalin, the Institute suffered repression since genetics was seen as a science that supports "inborn class differences." One of Stalin's victims was Vavilov himself. After being denounced by a former student, Stalin's protege Trofim Lysenko, Vavilov was arrested in August 1940 as he set out on a plant-collecting expedition in the Carpathian Mountains.

252 posted on 07/19/2006 6:21:00 PM PDT by Virginia-American
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To: Dixie Yooper
All I have to do is live my life as a Christian for just one lifetime here on Earth, which by the way is a very good life.

What does it mean to live your life as a Christian?

253 posted on 07/19/2006 6:28:30 PM PDT by stands2reason (ANAGRAM for the day: Socialist twaddle == Tact is disallowed)
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To: tomzz
Recent DNA studies have eliminated the neanderthal as a plausible human ancestor because the genetic gap is simply too wide, and the neanderthal was the closest thing to a modern human amongst the hominids. All other hominids were further removed from us THAN the neanderthal, and that includes homo ergaster and all the rest. Neanderthal DNA is described as "about halfway between ours and that of a chimpanzee".

To be descended from something, at some point, you have to be able to interbreed with the something, and we could no more interbreed with neanderthals or any other hominids, than we could with horses or chickens. In fact the lack of crossbreeding was always a big mystery, and the DNA studies pretty much cleared the mystery up.

There are a couple of errors in your post.

You are correct that Neanderthal is not an ancestral species. A lot of folks figured that out a while back, and the mtDNA has just confirmed it.

But there is no reason to believe that Neanderthal was "the closest thing to a modern human amongst the hominids." There is a nice progression going back through a succession of archaic humans (see the nice skulls at the bottom of the post) to the earlier Homo species and back to the Australopithecines (see the chart in my previous post; #246 I think).

Your statement "All other hominids were further removed from us THAN the neanderthal, and that includes homo ergaster and all the rest" does not coincide with what I have learned, and I can't accept it without some documentation. (And please, no creation websites. Their "science" is simply not science. They are the last ones people should trust when it comes to evolution, not the first.)

About the interbreeding and crossbreeding. I think you have a confused notion of evolution and how it works. You don't have a dinosaur getting a fever and suddenly giving birth to a bird. That's an inaccurate creationist strawman.

Each generation is almost exactly like the previous one, and there is no trouble with interbreeding. The key is almost--you are not the same as either of your parents, and I believe will have picked up four or so mutations besides that. So, we have microevolution in just one generation; we have it in every generation.

Add a million or ten million years and there is no reason to expect that some species undergoing environmental or other stresses will not have added sufficient change to amount to macroevolution, that is, a change from their ancestors sufficient to be considered a new species.

Finally, do you have a reference for "Neanderthal DNA is described as "about halfway between ours and that of a chimpanzee"? I have not seen that and doubt its accuracy.



Herto skulls (Homo sapiens idaltu)

Some new fossils from Herto in Ethiopia, are the oldest known modern human fossils, at 160,000 yrs. The discoverers have assigned them to a new subspecies, Homo sapiens idaltu, and say that they are anatomically and chronologically intermediate between older archaic humans and more recent fully modern humans. Their age and anatomy is cited as strong evidence for the emergence of modern humans from Africa, and against the multiregional theory which argues that modern humans evolved in many places around the world.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/herto.html

254 posted on 07/19/2006 6:32:50 PM PDT by Coyoteman (I love the sound of beta decay in the morning!)
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To: freedumb2003

PM to you....


255 posted on 07/19/2006 6:38:18 PM PDT by stands2reason (ANAGRAM for the day: Socialist twaddle == Tact is disallowed)
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To: stands2reason
Get it through your head that supporting evolution precludes believing in God.

???

256 posted on 07/19/2006 6:41:38 PM PDT by freedumb2003 (A Conservative will die for individual freedom. A Liberal will kill you for the good of society.)
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To: stands2reason

Thanks, tho.


257 posted on 07/19/2006 6:46:45 PM PDT by freedumb2003 (A Conservative will die for individual freedom. A Liberal will kill you for the good of society.)
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To: tomzz
An evolutionist has no rational basis for morality.

You must find morality to be inherently irrational if you believe that. Morality is logical.

Anyway, this particular evo follows the moral code of the Dharma.

258 posted on 07/19/2006 6:49:42 PM PDT by stands2reason (ANAGRAM for the day: Socialist twaddle == Tact is disallowed)
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To: Just mythoughts
Darwinist don't even make the cut as they disavow the very Creator that created their very souls.

Good thing I'm not one of these "Darwinist" then. I'm just an evo.

259 posted on 07/19/2006 6:59:49 PM PDT by stands2reason (ANAGRAM for the day: Socialist twaddle == Tact is disallowed)
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To: Dimensio

260 posted on 07/19/2006 7:03:09 PM PDT by stands2reason (ANAGRAM for the day: Socialist twaddle == Tact is disallowed)
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