I'm really convinced that our descendants a century or two from now will look back at us with the same pity that we have toward the people in the field of science two centuries ago.
The correct description is that we try every day to become more humble when we talk about divinity, we try to realize how little we know and how open minded we should be.
Three of my children are medical doctors, they know at least a hundred times as much about your body as my grandfather knew, but they don't know much more about soul than he did.
A doctor today would never prescribe the treatments my grandfather used in the Confederate Army, but a minister says pretty much the same thing today that a minister would have said back then.
Anybody who had come up with a new concept would have been under suspicion for being out of step with the tradition or out of step with the teachings of the church.