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?
This was a lot of words just to say “no”.
The Big Bang isn’t necessarily seen as the “beginning” of the universe, it’s really just the idea that if we rewind time, all the galaxies that we see currently see moving away from each other would be in the same location. The universe could be eternal and cyclical; the big bang could just be the beginning of the last cycle.
OP’s question is something I’ve though about myself. It would be so easy for a God talking to a person to just drop one tiny factoid to be verified later. You could say germs exist, you could say the planets orbit the sun, you could mention atoms, disease, almost anything. Instead God told a man to murder his own son to win a bet over nothing with someone he doesn’t even like because “trust me bro”. Jews and Muslims still won’t eat pork because they couldn’t figure out how to safely cook it 2000 years ago.
There is one honorable mention: Hinduism states that the age of the universe is about 4.32 billion years. Today scientists believe that the universe is about 13.79 billion years old.