This is the most fundamental of human characteristics that is manifested in
every government from Rome to the United States and if you cannot see this
then I am afraid that you will merely be confirming my ignorant
assumptions about your level of education and personal character. As Brown
explains in his text, ‘The most enlightened and intellectual participants
of any religion affirm that the principals of their faith are
established as moral guidelines as opposed to literal episodes of history.’

To which, I am tempted to respond – “Um, whatever.” And “You might want to check your grammar in that first sentence. I’m not sure that what you really said is what you mean.”

Again, we have the assumption that religious faith involves blindness to historical realities. Hey – religious person – you must not know that other religious have ritual washing or ritual meals! If you could only learn this, you’d be enlightened, like me!

Since there are shared symbols between religious systems, that means, there is, in the end, nothing distinctive on them, and those religious systems are based on nothing except the vague shared human impulses that produce the symbols. As I said to this correspondent, just because your family and mine both share meals doesn’t mean we have the same parents.

Of course, this is an issue widely addressed, very effectively by Chesterton in Orthodoxy and The Everlasting Man.