Scriptures Through Science

In my previous post , I reviewed the scriptural content in the Book of Judges. In this post, I'll summarise the scientific themes that I've been able to come up with, that link somehow to the text, which I could build a lesson plan on top of. In Judges 6:15 , Gideon exclaims to Heavenly Father, "Oh my Lord, wherewith shall I save Israel? behold, my family is poor in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father’s house ". I thought about linking this to the idea of small creatures that can do great things. Ants and beetles are great examples of small animals that are very powerful for their size . Beetles are strong creatures for their size. Photo by Weronika Romanowska on Unsplash In Judges 6:39-40 , Gideon requests of Heavenly Father to keep his fleece dry during the night and to let the dew settle on the rest of the ground. "And God did so that night: for it was dry upon the fleece only, and there was dew on all the ground." Perhaps we could talk about what ...

Last week's  lesson on Deuteronomy  was about Heavenly Father teaching the Israelites to care for others with an open heart, and we linked this to animal altruism, where there have been cases of animals willingly helping others (in their own or other species) without any apparent self-interest involved.  I introduced the hormone oxytocin and said that it had been shown to play a role in regulating the ability of animals to express complex caring behaviour. In experiments where scientists removed this hormone from voles, a species which is known for being monogamous and bonding for life , the affected vole partner would suddenly lose all interest in their mate. We used this idea of removing something important, and analysing the effects it would have, in our lesson, where we imagined that we had been commanded by Heavenly Father to NOT care for others, and we thought through what this would mean in our day-to-day lives. The hormone removal experiment invited several questi...

Last week I posted about some initial ideas I had for how to teach my upcoming lesson on the Book of Deuteronomy. I've settled on the theme of animal altriusm  (when animals help out others), and now I need to turn this into a lesson plan.  If you'd like to jump straight to the final lesson plan, click here . If you'd like to see how I got to it, read on... Photo by Cosmic Timetraveler on Unsplash The link here is Deuteronomy 15:10 , when Moses is preaching to the Israelites, and he relates Heavenly Father's instructions that the people are to help others with an open heart.  In my previous post , I thought that I could draw a parallel between this message from HF and animal altruism. I was curious about what was known about animal altriusm. It seems that there are several types: Animals may be programmed to help others, even when it means they are at a biological disadvantage when it comes to their own reproductive potential. This is described as biological altruism ...

The next LDS Come Follow Me primary lesson covers the whole of the Book of Deuteronomy, which relates the story of the Israelites wandering through the wilderness for 40 years in search of the Promised Land, as led by Moses, and which is mostly told in sermon form by Moses. It ends with Moses finally being able to see the Promised Land shortly before he passes away. Moses gazes upon the Promised Land from atop Mount Nebo. From Wikipedia . Rather than try to teach the story of the whole book though, I think it'll be nicer to focus on one specific lesson that we can take from a small part of it. My preferred brainstorming approach is to think of some ideas about how we can use science to connect to the themes from the scriptures, and then work up the best ideas into lesson plans. Here are some of the ideas that came to mind as I read through Deuteronomy: Deuteronomy 6 talks about "frontlets", which are intended to mean ornaments worn on the head. However they can also mea...