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Post by Kathryn on Dec 23, 2009 9:05:15 GMT -6
Well, I think one of the best things about older students is that they do try to self-educate. Most ecology is pretty concrete--stuff you can see-- and there are quite a few good books out there. (If you're interested in evolution in particular, try The Beak of the Finch by Jonathan Weiner.) But the public school system is terrible in terms of science education-- most of my students haven't had any ecology at all, and about half of them have no idea what natural selection is. Even public schools are a little scared to teach evolution, and since it's hard to teach ecology without evolution, it just falls by the wayside. (/rant) But if you're into concrete science, try ecology or botany. Not that chem is less real, but I failed organic chemistry because I couldn't see what was happening, and there weren't real-life examples I could anchor my thinking to. Don't get discouraged! I'm sure you're a better student than your teachers are used to. Seriously, I LOVE second-career students. (/educator)
I have never been to the creation museum-- one of my fundie friends organized a trip once but I couldn't bring myself to go. He LOVED it, though, so I bet it was even worse than it was on the show! Ken Ham is a first-class nut.
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Post by juliet on Dec 24, 2009 22:17:28 GMT -6
I know this might sound weird to some, but it's things like this that make me think we could be the result of some divine intervention. I've had the same confusion in the past, mrsconfused, but the more I am actually learning about evolution (Richard Dawkins and New Scientist Magazine have been good sources), the more I agree with, "Of course we exist here on this earth as we do today...if we didn't adapt and weren't naturally selected to survive the environment as it changed, we wouldn't be here." Divine intervention would be oxygen breathers surviving in a methane gas atmosphere.
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rosa
New Member
Posts: 27
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Post by rosa on Jan 5, 2010 20:01:29 GMT -6
Kathryn, de Waals thesis (simplified a lot) was that bonobo females banded together to protect themselves & their babies from marauding males; chimpanzee females forage by themselves and then stick by a big daddy chimp when they're in danger; and humans pair-bonded so dad had a reason to stick around. He gave lots of examples of infanticide by jealous nonfather in chimpanzee society. But, he's just one primatologist.
The novel I'm reading posits that once you get cultural transmission by language, you get long adolescences (for learning) and folks that live past reproductive age for the first time. But all evo-psych stuff is just conjecture, whether it's novelized or not. Chimpanzees in captivity live way longer than their reproductive years, too.
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Post by juliet on Jan 7, 2010 17:33:54 GMT -6
I watched "The Human Spark: Part 1" on PBS last night. It was quite good and actually touched on a couple of the points of information in this thread.
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