We will embarrass our descendants, just as our ancestors embarrass us. This is moral progress. - Sam Harris

If religion addresses a genuine sphere of understanding and human necessity, then it should be susceptible to progress; its doctrines should become more useful, rather than less. Progress in religion, as in other fields, would have to be a matter of present inquiry, not the mere reiteration of past doctrine. Whatever is true now should be discoverable now, and describable in terms that are not an outright affront to the rest of what we know about the world. By this measure, the entire project of religion seems perfectly backward. It cannot survive the changes that have come over us - culturally, technologically, and even ethically. otherwise, there are few reasons to believe that we will survive it.

Take, for example, the people who think Elvis is still alive… What’s wrong with this claim? Why is this claim not vitiating our academic departments and corporations? I’ll tell you why, and it’s very simple. We have not passed laws against believing Elvis is still alive. It’s just whenever somebody seriously represents his belief that Elvis is still alive – in a conversation, on a first date, at a lecture, at a job interview – he immediately pays a price. He pays a price in ill-concealed laughter.

A belief is a lever that, once pulled, moves almost everything in a person’s life.