ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that confidence about the “end of religious history” manifests an important cognitive illusion. With the end-of-religious-history illusion exposed, philosphers have a baseline for religious progress quite friendly to the idea that much progress remains to be made in relation to the goal of fully tapping human transcendent aspirations. The chapter suggests that the religious might make progress by focusing on the managing or elimination of small-scale developmental immaturities and by cultivating a new broadly evolutionary self-understanding in connection with both actual and possible developmental immaturity. It explains the idea that human beings are laboring under an important end-of-religious-history illusion and offer a few initial reasons for taking it seriously. Virtually all religious discussion and also discussion about religion, both critical and defensive, presupposes that major religious developments have come to an end.
