The capacity to maintain exp1icit belief in religious "fact," however, has been severe1y undermined in the last few centuries-first in the West, and then everywhere else. A succession of great scientists and iconoclasts has demonstrated that the universe does not revo1ve around man, that our notion of separate status from and "superiority" to the animal has no empirical basis, and that there is no God in heaven (nor even a heaven, as far as the eye can see). In consequence, we no 10nger believe our own stories-no 10nger even believe that those stories served us weH in the past.
