As for arrogance, I think the whole scholarly tradition in Western Europe and America which follows Gibbon in disparaging the Christian Empire, a civilization which spanned over 1000 years and was the dominant power in Europe and the Levant through much of it, is the height of arrogance in its cultural self-centeredness.
Great original thoughts which do not accord with fact are called fantasies and are the province of adolecents, not adults.
Tell that to H. Schlieman before he discovered Troy, and a bookfull of others who went beyond "accepted facts". Only pedantic dullards are trapped in the fantasy that accepted "facts" are the only "facts", or are, in fact, facts at all.