Otherwise, there are few reasons to believe that we will survive it

[GoodTaste]

Does "it" refer back to "the entire project of religion"? I have difficulty in understanding the last line of the quotation below. Can you explain it with more words?

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Whatever is true now should be discoverable now, and describable in terms that are not an outright affront to the rest of what we knew about the world. By this measure, the entire project of religion seems perfectly backward. It cannot survive the changes that have come over us-culturally, technologically, and even ethically. Otherwise, there are few reasons to believe that we will survive it.

Source: The End of Faith by Sam Harris pp22

More content is here.

 

[jutfrank]

Yes, it refers back to the entire project of religion.

He's saying that if religion is not able to change itself in order to accommodate our cultural, technological and ethical progress, then it will destroy us in the end. Basically, either it goes or we go.

 

[GoodTaste]

Does "otherwise" there mean "if it survives"? ("And if it survives, then there are almost no reason we will survive it").

 

[Tarheel]

Yes.

 

[Tdol]

the entire project of religion

He's probably also suggesting that, as a project, religion is not so much an expression of faith, but some sort of con.