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.
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.
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.
Your post came off as very bitter.
I hope you are not like 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?
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.
Not that I could understand.
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):
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
I'm sure if DY is interested in the truth, he/she will respond.
Stalin didn't kill that many evos.
Stalin didn't kill that many evos.
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.
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.
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.
What does it mean to live your life as a Christian?
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.
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.
PM to you....
???
Thanks, tho.
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.
Good thing I'm not one of these "Darwinist" then. I'm just an evo.
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