I’ve been doing a lot of research into Judaism. They seem to encourage asking tough questions and taking the answers seriously, which is good.
After reading a bit of the Torah, it got me thinking, why aren’t there any references to people who could not have been known to its followers at the time? No mention of East Asians or Native Americans. Did God just forget about them when he talked through Moses? Or he thought they weren’t important enough to mention?
Then it got me thinking some more. What about science? Wouldn’t it be effective to convince followers of legitimacy if a religion could accurately predict a scientific phenomenon before its followers have the means of discovering it? Say, “And God said, let there be bacteria! And then there was bacteria.” But there is nothing like that. Anywhere, as far as I can tell. Among any religion.
I’m not a theologian and I’m always interested in learning more, so any insights would be helpful.
Edit: A lot of responses seem to be saying “people wouldn’t have had a use for that knowledge at the time” seem to be parroting religious talking points without fully understanding their implications. Why would God only tell people what they would have a use for at the time? Why wouldn’t he give them information that could expand the possibilities of what they were capable of? Why does it matter if people had a word for something at the time? Couldn’t God just tell them new words for new things? If God was only telling them things that were relevant to them at the time, why didn’t He say so? Also, how come he doesn’t come back and tell us things that are relevant now, or at least mention that he isn’t coming back?
I’ve heard it speculated that certain religious dietary restriction such as Kosher and Halal prohibit many of the foods that would have been most difficult to render safe with the available technology. Without anything resembling modern germ theory, they couldn’t articulate any scientific justification, so it was just “God says these lobsters aren’t food.” And yet, the people who believed that probably got less food poisoning than the people who didn’t.
The idea that religious dietary restrictions prevented food-born illness doesn’t hold water. Plenty of allowed foods carry illness.
It doesn’t help to exclude pork, for example if you’re eating chicken med-rare. And if you know how to cook chicken until it’s safe, why is pork a metaphysical riddle?
People should give more credit to historic humans, they lacked much of our knowledge but they were every bit as smart.