Replies

I don’t think scientific doctrines are the exclusive province of Catholics, Jews, Hindus, or Atheists. Nor was this my point.

Those renowned inventors, scholars, discoverers, philosophers, jurists, writers, essayists, poets, painters, sculptors, astronomers, and mathematicians who lived in the A.D. period (Newton, Pasteur, Faraday, Keppler to name a few examples) had a choice of religious beliefs from which to choose from including Hinduism and Buddhism that long predated Christianity.

Indeed, many of them were well versed in Greek and Roman mythology that influenced and was influenced by an assortment of religious beliefs and a whole strain of cults at the time.

Yet despite this menu of choices they chose Catholicism and literary giants like T.S. Eliot, Hillaire Belloc, and G.K. Chesterton whose writings are all standard fare in English Literature were avid and indefatigable Catholics/Christians.

There are several “multi-thousand year old traditions” like the Aztec and Maya cultures that involved human sacrifices as a weekly ritual, this does not mean that one must be respectful of either such beliefs or rituals because of a tradition that was barbaric unless one wants to be considered politically correct. In the modern era “honor killings” in the context of Hindu/Moslem culture is barbaric.

So to turn around your premise that fact that these individuals of science and literature chose to reject pre-existing beliefs “before Mary and Joseph were born should give you pause for thought.”