Monotheism, Secularity and Disenchantment

The 'disenchantment of the world' thesis, states that capitalist techno-modernity devalued older ways of knowing associated with religious belief, by asserting that there is no evidence that praying to an invisible God had any effect on reality, and that ordinary people were only fooling themselves and believing in an illusion.

This type of transformation is often considered new, but it has deeper roots in the iconoclastic monotheism of the Abrahamic variety. 'Monotheistic' or 'Abrahamic' faiths (both contested terms to be sure) devalued previous ways of knowing in virtually the same way, by asserting that there is no evidence that praying to God-embodied-thru objects (rocks, carved wood, trees, mountains) had any effect on reality, and that ordinary people were only fooling themselves and believing in an illusion. (look at the story of Abraham in Qisas Anbiya, for example).

Although both modes of thinking contain important and vital critiques of the arrogance of human conduct, they tend to reinforce a certain conceptual arrogance of their own in their approach to the mystery of reality. In a rough epistemological sense, the arrogance of much iconoclastic thinking is the ideological precursor to the arrogance of disenchanted secularity.