mean progress in the sense of the natural way in which learning something new requires getting rid of something old, like how discovering that the world is round means that you can no longer hang on to the idea that you might one day fall off the edge of the Earth. And now that you have learned that something you thought was true was never true at all, every idea that you hold firm comes into question. If the Earth is round, then is God real? Literalism is helpful in the fight against change.
