Today, many have the impression of being faced with a sea change in the way ordinary people understand the world in which they happen to live, i.e. that we are witnessing the end of the critical passion, that animated modern minds for centuries and encouraged them to imagine and pursue a radical change of world and society. In the essay, this putative historical transition is analyzed in light of the master narrative about religion’s role in human evolution, developed by Robert Bellah in his recent book with the same title (Religion in Human Evolution, 2011), in order to raise some questions about the fate of social criticism in a radically secular age.