Fine, but by making "less factually incorrect statements about the universe" your measure of progress, you've essentially assumed what you're trying to show -- the superiority of Enlightenment-based, progressive civilization.

Not really. Someone can have a detailed and correct understanding of the universe and not have that impact there morals. What's relevant here is that some of those aspects directly inform morals. We know now that an Abrahamic deity is extremely unlikely or for that matter most other classical deity notions. Thus, morals, values or general deontological rules based on divine revelation are not by themselves worth looking at. Similarly, at a meta-level we know that when people do discuss issues where morality disagrees to pay less attention to arguments based off of religious texts.