(Mods, just saw this new thread. Can disregard my previous attempt to post this in Big Event thread.)
Joseph, your scholarship is staggering, and I don’t know where you got it all from. Yasher Koach. Nevertheless, I will bring you an irrefutable rayah (lfi aniyus daati)that Chazal did not know the science of today. This is not apikorsis, because it is not one of the ikrei emunah to believe that Chazal knew everything, only that their HALACHIC pronouncements are from the RBSH via Moshe Rabbeinu.
We know that twice in our history the Beis Hamikdash was destoyed. We lost first to the Babylonians in the time of the Neviim, and to the Romans in the time of the Tannaim.
Had Chazal known the science of today, why didn’t they build an atomic bomb and drop it on Rome. If that would have taken too long, then why not a couple of planes with a handful of bombs? I submit even a single modern tank with a few hundred rounds of tank shells could have taken out their entire army of horsemen. After a few explosions, whichever horses and riders were still alive would be fleeing in panic for their lives.
The siege of Yerushalayim lasted a while. During this time, if they knew our modern sciences they would have been MECHUYAV to build modern weapons and defend Eretz Yisroel. I claim that lchol hadayos, even Neturei Karta would agree that back then even on Shabbos one was obligated to defend even a single far flung border town. Certainly to defend Yerushalayim, and even more so to protect the lives of the Yidden because of PIKUACH NEFESH MAMASH. There is no heter in the world for them not to have saved us from defeat. (Ein osin ir hanidachas basefer, we don’t make a border town an ir hanidachas even if they all worshipped Avodah Zara, since it will lead to infiltration.) Churban Beis Hamikdash was the quintessential milchemes mitzvah and they would have been mechuyav to save klal yisroel via their advanced weapons. If that is not a milchemes mitzvah, I don’t know what is. Even one cannon could probably have saved us.
You may claim that we were punished because of varios aveiros so we were destined to lose. Nevertheless, if one sees a person whose life is in danger on Shabbos and tells him that he deserves to die, and we cannot save you because of Chilul Shabbos, the Rambam says that this person is an Apikorus. Lives take precedence over all else. Chazal would have used modern weapons then, if they knew how to build them. Instead of risking smuggling out Reb Yochanan ben Zakkai in an aron to try to beg the king to at least save Kerem Byavneh (he didn’t even bother asking for Yerushalayaim, as he knew he could only get a hatzalah purtah, small request), they should have smuggled in a smart bomb and remotely detonated it in the king’s face.
We see clearly from here they had no modern technological knowledge, or they would have had absolutely no heter not to use it at that critical time. This is a rayah sh’ein alav tshuvah. In English, that means Checkmate. You may try some weak dochak answers, if any actually exist, but you would appear to have been refuted. The sources you quote did not live at a time when science had advanced so far. They did not have the benefit of the hindsight we have now.
But one other source. I believe Reb Elya Lopian quotes a Zohar on Vayiftichu arubos hashamayim, that in the year 5500, new chochma will pour down into the world which was never previously known. This corresponds to the beginning of the Scientific Revolution.
This is a very disconcerting topic to deal with, but let me conclude with one thing. We have a beautiful unbroken mesorah. Do you know what that mesorah is? It is the mesorah of Chesed that Avrohom started, and Yaakov and Moshe rescued the sheep, and it continues down to today unbroken with the work of Tomchei Shabbos. This is our mesorah which no other nation has come close to. We are the only nation that has an issur of loshon hara. Once we realize that the whole purpose of the Torah is to teach us menschlachkeit, not science, we see the incredible things our nation was zocheh to accomplish. We never perpetrated a holocaust on anybody else, and we are the biggest philanthropists and have an inate kindness which we inherited from our holy Avos, who had to fight off all kinds of barbaric behavior in their time, and helped civilize the entire ancient world our norms of behavior, which persist until today in what even the USA acknowledges as the Judeo-Christian foundations of our legal system and way of life.