This is predicated on the idea that at any point in history a reliable percentage of beliefs is crazy and/or evil and will be shown to be so at a later time. Seems intuitively wrong.

IF immortality hit "today", roughly a quarter of the US population would be scientifically literate, and would remain so -- likely -- the remainder of their lives, based on the age ranges that spread holds true of today. That's rather disturbing, to me.