What if all the advances we have made were really just giant leaps backward instead of forward? What if we had already known these things millions of years ago, and are just know relearning them? I have had time to read the Bible, easiest by far of all religious texts to read and understand, and have though that Adam and Eve is all just a fairy tale, hiding a much bigger story, the story of the fall of man, not into sin, but into ignorance, which is the same thing as sin, at the end of the day. When we were pure, and “with God”, we were probably a great civilization. Not the way it is now, but different in a better way. And after we had fallen, books were written, that told the story of what happened, and what we knew long ago, and how to get back to it. Yes, the Apocalypse is coming. The world will not physically end, but perhaps the world as we see and know it will end, giving way to a new era to humanity. Not the Second Coming of Jesus, but the Second Coming of Man. Do you think so? Do youthink we really could have been great people once, long ago?
What if is an interesting question. Unfortunately, the answer to your question is no. There’s simply no evidence to support the idea that human beings were far more advanced (technologically speaking) in the past than they are now.
I have seen no evidence whatsoever to support that conclusion. In particular, there does not seem to be any clear knowledge in the Bible that is in advance of anything we know now, nor instructions to restore mankind to this hypothetical advanced state.
Perhaps if you take it for face value, then of course you won’t see anything, but clearly the Book of Revelations is a mess. Seven-headed beasts and swarms of locusts and blood oceans? Come on! get real! Through rigorous examination and reading between the lines, you may come to find things that you missed.
Why do you think many civilizations of history had Sages? They were supposedly the guardians of the knowledge, and that they kept it from the everyday human, who might have doomed us all by misusing it.
If I were going to encode advanced knowledge into a book, I guess I put in the Pythagorean Theorem, Calculus, Heliocentrism, evolution, maps of the globe, an explanation of how heat is the result of random movement, Maxwell’s equations, and so forth. I could put together a pretty sweet primer on basic science and mathematics and political philosophy if I had the space of a book the size of The Bible, or even just the Torah.
So why didn’t the guys who wrote The Bible do that?
The OP was originally posted twice; I’ve merged the responses into one thread.
What if Fundamentalism was an invention of Satan to confuse people into ignoring more important things about Christianity or scientific research? Or what if St. Paul was possessed by a fallen angel intentionally to subvert Christianity (which, if I were an evil and super powerful entity, would seem a really good idea to me)?
They probably did, it’s just that they didn’t go by the names you give them now. for example, Entanglement Theory. It’s all about understanding your place in the universe. Back then, it wasn’t called Entanglement Theory, but at-one-ment.
Well, any encoded knowledge in the New Testament has surely since been lost after nearly two thousand of years of translation, and the Old Testament’s Hebrew has been subjected to enough analysis over the years to tease out any secrets it might have held so… I doubt it.
That isn’t what quantum entanglement is about at all. Not even in the slightest bit. Before you claim to understand some aspect of modern physics was predicted in the Bible, first try to understand what you’re talking about.
No, just no.
Not only is looking for ‘hidden’ knowledge in holy books a shell game, but there’s absolutely no evidence that there was any great cache of knowledge that we’ve lost. There is some evidence that ancient cultures probably had electricity in limited forms, but nothing more sweeping than that.
Where are the archeological traces of this great civilization? Where are the remains of the prosperous settlements? Where are the burial sites filled with the bones of tall, healthy people who lived to a ripe old age? Why do we only find evidence of people who lived precarious and toil-filled lives?
Alright then, Professor Hawking. Would you be so kind as to give your dissertation to the class?
That’s a pretty mouthy response to someone who is correct.
What exactly are you talking about? Could you give us an example of a scientific-knowledge-withholding Sage (from history, not from mythology)?
They ARE right, so I want to know what Quantum Entanglement is. I seek only to learn.
:dubious:
I have trouble following this, but maybe it is just that you are having trouble finding the return key on your keyboard. 
If we just concentrate on the Holy Books as “the keys to long-forgotten knowledge” What I think is that the knowledge you are talking about is from the past. IMHO writing destroyed the usual way religion evolved with societies. Oral recollection of the religious customs allowed to easily integrate new developments or to remove non operational dogmas or rules.
Once writing enters the picture we even caught the change that was usually going on like in a photograph. Unfortunately for posterity, the changes that were possible before stopped. And many religions are still trying to figure out how to go forward with written rules and items that are no longer valid (Slavery, for example)
Unfortunately, the answer is really really damn complex, and involves a lot of math. To actually understand, you’ll probably have to spend a few years studying physics and mathematics. I do not say this to be condescending. I say this because quantum physics is mind-bogglingly complex and counter-intuitive. I only know enough to understand some of the basic concepts and to realize how much more there is I don’t understand.
There’s also the Phaistos Disk, demonstrating an early form of movable type, some 3000 years before Gutenberg. History is sprinkled with one-off advances that (for a variety of reasons but mostly because complementary technology did not yet exist) were not developed to their full potential.