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?
Yes, but it’s not what you’re thinking, and they could be known at the time, just not through scientific method, but we had to rediscover them.
In Abrahamic religions the eating of pork is prohibited because pork is an “unclean” animal, and indeed pork is one of the most dangerous meats to consume when not cooked properly. This could be divine knowledge, or people simply realizing that those who ate pork got more sick than those who didn’t.
Another example is about meditation and other mental health from oriental religions. The science to back up that is very recent but they have been doing it for thousands of years and have been claiming all of the benefits that we’re now discovering. But also this could have slowly evolved by observing yourself which is a lot of what meditation is about, so who could have thought that self inspection would allow you to understand yourself better?
So at the end of the day I don’t think there’s any example of what you’re looking for, because anything we know now they could have guessed back then and would not necessarily be divine knowledge. Accurate precognition would be an example of something we would have no explanation for, but that has never happened, most prophecies are abstract and open to interpretation.
But tons of people are pork with nothing happening do it’s a bullshit hypothesis.
Yes, and lots of people eat raw chicken and nothing happens to them, I guess you also think Salmonella doesn’t exist, or that we would be unable to figure that out, because of that. Lots of people can do something without it affecting them negatively and that still be a bad idea. And it’s also possible for someone keeping tabs to notice these sorts of correlations.
Yet plenty of people ate pork and didn’t suffer any noticeable setback. This is a myth, or rather some kind of apologetics aimed at attempting a rational explanation at something which wasn’t decided by rationality.
Wrong, it could be based on plenty of solid, evidence based objectives and cultural materialisms that sadly might be lost to time, atleast from the context of these religions.
Some armchair historians have theorised that sweating remove toxins from the body and pigs that dont sweat very well might be bad to eat because of toxin accumulation in their bodies, but this has been debunked some time ago. Toxins don’t accumulate to significant levels, neither does sweating remove them in any meaningful manner.
The strongest indicator is that this idea that pigs = dirty comes from abrahamic religions that all developed in the middle east and the levant - arid, inhospitable regions with precious water sources.
Also important to note is that this idea also did NOT originate independently in other regions where water and the vegetative life it spawns, was more plentiful.
There are some valid concerns when raising pigs in arid climates:
Shitty sweat glands: Pigs have very ineffective sweat glands that are really shitty at keeping them cool. Instead, pigs cool themselves down by wallowing in water or mud. In a desert setting were water and mud are rare if at all available, pigs tend to get very hot and resort to wallowing whatever is closely available - which as it turns out, especially in an animal pen, is pigshit.
Food economy: Pigs are both omnivorous and need more water and shelter than other desert livestock like goats or sheep - desert animals survive on less water, and have fur coats that protect them from the harsh sun. In a place where resource conservation was a necessity, it is costlier and harder to raise pigs and the returns from them was consequently less.
Symbolic: Okay this is not a very strong evidence based approach but people watching pigs eat their own shit and wallow in them makes people not want to associate with it.
Now in regions with ample rainfall and forests, keeping pigs is easy. Just stay near a river or pond and you’re good. Pigs are even capable of foraging for food in forests themselves, though a pig farmer that lets his pigs do that will lose a bunch to wild animals and other people. Pigs are efficient converters of food into meat, and they can pretty much eat human leftovers and byproducts that come from farming, which you were doing anyway.
Take for example Europe and China: Both have had pigs as cornerstones in their diets. Europe survived winter months with preserved pig products like hams and sausages. In China, pigs are even more important. It’s practically unavoidable and their cuisine reflects that.
Now one might raise a relevant question: If abrahamic religions, due to their locations of origin, hates pork, why doesn’t Christianity, an abrahamic religion, place as much focus on avoiding it? I can’t be sure of the answer to this one; Jesus in the new testament does say that every animal under the sun is game for food: the old testament does prohibit pig as food, but the new testament overwrites the old. My best bet is that Christianity, with it’s apostles travelling all over the world, spread into and flourished in non-arid regions - and given that the new testament removed the restriction on pork, it also flourished as a food source under it.
Don’t even get me started on the broadcloth bullshit that is the entire section of “oriental” 🤢 “medicine”.
FFS.
Bacon