Secular vs. Sacred Paradigms in Science, Technology, and Economics: Crises of the Enlightenment and Search for an Alternative Paradigm

This paper is a polemic directed against the European Enlightenment and its secular paradigm. It argues that by replacing the sacredness with the secular, the Enlightenment project has put civilisation in a state of crisis. By claiming that human beings are self-sufficient, it has turned the self to an “inner god” with a desire to take over the control of the universe. By failing to recognize that a full understanding of the outer universe depends on an understanding of the inner one, it has succeeded in revealing the outer universe to some degree, but at the expense of darkening the inner universe. By substituting the Christian Trinity with the “Secular Trinity” of nature, cause-effect, and chance, it has, despite its achievements in the fields of science, technology and economics, succeeded only in producing a capitalist paradise kept going by “soulless humans, secular science, destructive technology, and an unsustainable consumer culture. The aim of this polemical paper is to propose the Tawhidic paradigm as an alternative: an alternative based on a sacred ontological, epistemological, anthropological, and teleological worldview, and capable of producing human-centered science and technology as well as an economic system that will bring peace and prosperity through moral, intellectual, spiritual and material well-being.