all the progress we’ve made since the Enlightenment
What progress? There has been technological progress, and scientific progress. There has been no moral progress (insofar as the concept is even meaningful). I agree with C. S. Lewis’s remark in Mere Christianity:
But surely the reason we do not execute witches is that we do not believe there are such things. If we did—if we really thought that there were people going about who had sold themselves to the devil and received supernatural powers from him in return and were using these powers to kill their neighbours or drive them mad or bring bad weather—surely we would all agree that if anyone deserved the death penalty, then these filthy quislings did? There is no difference of moral principle here: the difference is simply about matter of fact. It may be a great advance in knowledge not to believe in witches: there is no moral advance in not executing them when you do not think they are there. You would not call a man humane for ceasing to set mousetraps if he did so because he believed there were no mice in the house.
What progress? There has been technological progress, and scientific progress. There has been no moral progress (insofar as the concept is even meaningful). I agree with C. S. Lewis’s remark in Mere Christianity: