And God blessed them, and God said unto them, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.”  (Genesis 1:28)

After God created the universe and all that is in it, including Adam and Eve, He commanded us to be good stewards of His creation.  In order to be good stewards, we need to understand the things He created.

God created the all the laws of the universe; physical and moral.  So, we begin by learning what those laws are and how they operate.  We study science and philosophy in order to learn God’s laws.

And God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness …” (Genesis 1:26)

God made us in His image.  This means that we can apply reason and logic to better understand His awesome creation.  He created all this by speaking the Word.  So, in the learning, we are getting into His mind.  The famous astronomer, Johannes Kepler, said that in learning about the sky, he was, “thinking God’s thoughts after Him.”

Since we are created in the Image of God we can also, to a limited extent, create.  Although we certainly cannot perform God’s miracles; create stars, worlds, and living creatures, we can use the resources that God provided us and our knowledge of His designs to create technologies.  Many of our inventions have resulted from engineers studying creatures and mimicking the design features that God used in creating them.  This is known as biomimicry.

I will pass through all thy flock to day, removing from thence all the speckled and spotted cattle, and all the brown cattle among the sheep, and the spotted and speckled among the goats: and of such shall be my hire. (Genesis 32)

This passage gives us an example of using science to be good stewards of God’s creation. In this passage Jacob made an agreement with Laban to divide the sheep, with Jacob taking the speckled sheep and goats and the white sheep and black goats for Laban.  His was very clever and it led to success because he had learned the basics of genetics.  The speckled sheep and goats had a more diverse genetic mixture, while white sheep and black goats have lost information on how to produce speckled sheep and goats.  Also, in breeding “pure breeds” their offspring are not as healthy.  That is why we do not marry our cousins.

So, Jacob obeyed God’s commandment by learning about genetics and produced a healthy and fruitful flock of sheep and goats to provide meat, milk, and wool!