Monotheism inadvertently planted the seeds of science and atheism

Evidence

The monotheisms laid the groundwork for the modern secular world in other respects as well. Historian Marcel Gauchet notes two striking continuities between the three monotheisms and the secularisms they ushered. First, it was the monotheistic religions that reduced the role of the sacred and the supernatural from the material world, confining them to a supreme God who created it. Thus, the world, which in polytheism had always been infused with the supernatural, became a material world of cause and effect. In time, this allowed for some to imagine a distant God who created the world but did not actively manage it. It became possible to probe these cause-effect relations by scientific methods. Second, the monotheisms introduced another innovation—other gods were denigrated as false gods. Thus, the monotheisms may have inadvertently planted the seeds of atheism: if people can deny the existence of other gods, it’s only a matter of time before they start denying the existence of any gods. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 561

Categorization

• XREF: Reframes Norenzayan’s own Big God thesis: the very omniscient deity that enforced cooperation also created the conceptual tools to doubt all gods — contradicts a naive functionalist reading. — connects to: Theistic scientists attacked mechanism for excluding divine purpose and providence from nature — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 911
• DEFINE: Defines the ‘secularization as outgrowth of monotheism’ thesis via Gauchet’s two continuities.