In its earliest formulations by Enlightenment thinkers such as Voltaire, Marx, Comte, and Spencer, there is little doubt that secularization involved a linear and unstoppable decline of religion to the point of its disappearance. August Comte, pioneering French sociologist as a founder of discipline of sociology, suggests that human history passed through three stages, namely, theological, metaphysical and positive stage. Each stage was characterized by a different set of intellectual beliefs:

1. In the first, theological stage, religious and superstitious beliefs would be dominant.
2. These would be weakened as society passed into the second, metaphysical state, during which philosophy would become more important.
3. Religious belief would disappear altogether in the final, positive stage, in which science alone would dominate human thinking and direct human behavior.