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Required assignments:
0. Read: this blog post
1. Read: Knowledge Not the Limit of Belief
2. Watch/listen: Two Babies in the Womb Discuss the After-Delivery…
3. Take lots of notes and have lots of deep thoughts
(4. Additional suggested activities are at the end of the post)
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(0) Greetings, Vanguardians!
We are embarking upon a year-long exploration of the topics of experience, belief, and reason and how they lead us to make the decisions that define our lives.
(1) This first assignment is a short but interesting one.
Margaret Gatty has written a series of thought-provoking parables about nature. We’ll be reading one of her parables this week: “Knowledge Not the Limit of Belief”.
It describes a conversation between three characters: a zoophyte (look up the definition of this beforehand — it will help the story make sense), a strip of seaweed, and a bookworm.
A fourth character is referenced, is important, but doesn’t actually take part in the conversation. He is man — the scientist or naturalist in the story.
The tale begins in the the scientist’s home library. A gust of wind was just blown through the room, disrupting a number of books of collected specimens and knocking them to the ground. This jostling brings together the zoophyte and the seaweed who have not seen each other since the naturalist pulled them from the sea some time ago. The seaweed begins.
As this is a short reading assignment, please read the parable 2 or 3 times.
The language Mrs. Gatty used to write the story is somewhat antiquated and so I also include here a version with “modernized” English.
Feel free to read the same version multiple times or read a mixture of both.
PDF versions of each are also included here. I encourage you to print off one or both versions to take notes on —
Original language version: https://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/gatty/parables/parables.html#knowledge
Updated/modern language version: https://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/gatty/parables/parables.html#knowledge
Original version PDF (to download and print): https://mtnebovanguard.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/KNOWLEDGE-NOT-THE-LIMIT-OF-BELIEF.pdf
Modernized Language PDF (to download and print): https://mtnebovanguard.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/Belief-is-Not-Limited-to-What-we-Know-MODERNIZED-LANGUAGE.pdf
(2) The second assignment is a short video story. It’s a conversation between two babies who are still in their mothers’ womb. It opens with the line, “The first baby turned to the other and said, ‘Do you believe in life after delivery?’…”
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/iZ7t-5PoDeA
Again, as this is a very short story, please take the time to watch or listen to it multiple times.
Warning: you will likely find this story very interesting. And while we will discuss the content of the story, we will also spend time looking at not only what the the story says, but how it goes about saying it — what the intentions are and what methods are used to pursue those ends.
The first time or two that you listen to the story (it isn’t even two minutes long, so again, plan on listening to it multiple times) just relax and let the narrative wash over you. Listen to the content and let the story-teller take you on the journey we will later analyze.
The next few times, keep the following questions in mind: (1) What does this story demonstrate? (2) What does it imply? (3) What does this story convince you of? (4) Is this story a reporting of fact? (5) Is it compelling enough to influence any part of your thinking or behaviour? (6) After listening to this story, did you find yourself making any determinations to think or live or act differently?
This sort of study is called meta-analysis and concerns itself with the how rather than the what.
More on this later.
(3) As ever: As you read and listen, TAKE NOTES.
Here are some possibilities of things your could write down:
What surprised you?
What questions does the text raise in you?
What confused you?
What delighted you?
What was mind-blowingly brilliant?
What could be made into a meme?
What you would say to the author or characters if you had the chance?
What scriptures passages come to mind as your read/listen?
How you would change things in the story?
Was anything dissatisfying?
Which characters do you relate with? Which not? etc.
This is how you engage in The Great Conversation
Enjoy these shorter assignments this week, but don’t mistake brevity for lack of substance. These two short works introduce the foundation of what should turn out to be an enlightening journey this year.
With you on the road
— Casey
(4) Additional/optional assignments:
1. Listen to this song
Just because
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyrjAKP6iWE
2. “If religion is a fairy tale of those afraid of the dark, then atheism is a fairy tale of those afraid of the light.” — Prof. John Lennox
Do you agree or disagree?
3. Make a beautiful (or manly) plaquard of this saying:
Watch like a scientist
Think like a philosopher
Believe like a child*
(*but choose your authorities carefully!)
4. One of the two larger texts that we will read this year is a work of imaginative fiction written by a modern believer/philosopher who immersed himself in medieval literature and who wrote extensively of “man’s first disobedience and the fruit of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste brought death into the world…”
That covers just about all of Time 🙂
The final Field Trip book of the year is written by this same author, is again a work of “fiction”, and is written from the perspective of the devil himself. It is a manual written by devils for devils on how to trick, trap, deceive, and “lead men carefully down to hell.”
This class is companion to and preparation for that book.
Feel free to start reading CS Lewis’ Perelandra (sequel to last year’s Out of the Silent Planet) and The Screwtape Letters in preparation for future classes.
Bon apetite
5. Go for a tech-free walk
Silence and Nature are the parents of revelation
Solivtur ambulando
6. For extra-mega-diamond-platinum-supreme-level Vancoins, spend a day alone in the mountains with your milkcows with “no phone, no earbuds — just [you] and your thoughts.”
Any time will do
(Thank you for the suggestion, Elder Anderson)
7. Fast (Thank you for that, Elder Soares)
8. Stop gambling (Elder Christofferson)
9. [Choose your own challenge from Conference]
Remember to journal!!!
