Except that the period of Classical and Hellenistic Greece and Rome are considered a cultural golden age. Not "the dark ages".
And the Greeks didn't see the world as one ruled by cause and effect? Tell that to bloody Aristotle, who pretty much defined the concept.The gods were not seen as random, but part of a greater order and structure of the universe.
"Order" in the abstract isn't the sole purview of monotheism. The mythology of the Olympian gods is an overarching narrative of establishing order and harmony over the universe, and doing away with the old era of chaos and monstrousness. Norse mythology is conveyed as one long epic struggle of order versus chaos. This isn't anything new.
The battle for order versus chaos, always places chaos in the dark and scary side of the equation, with modern relative morality, often paranoid and compulsive, tending to favor a random universe. Monotheism reduced things to one source and not two competing sources thereby reducing random.
It is like Democrats and Republicans will hold no punches with each other. However, in fighting, in either party, is more controlled, since there is one leadership for all. This helps the party maintain order.
It is interesting that the Golden Age appears in BC. This golden age last into early AD, and then starts to decline and go backwards to a darker time; Dark Ages, like a helix that has returned to an origin, and has to build up again.
My theory is, this had to do with the migration of the ego or conscious mind, from the left to right side of the brain. The golden age had the ego in the right side of the brain. The left side of the brain gives us a differential POV; see the details, while the right side is more integral and allows us to see order. The left side allows us to differentiate the world, while the right side allows us to integrate this data. Art is from the right brain. It brings endless options into a focus that touches us.
The dark ages appear, Jesus predicted, as the collective ego or conscious mind migrates toward the left brain and people began to differentiate the world, more and more, until the old integrations of the Golden Age, no longer seem work as smoothly; too much new data. This would cause chaos to appear; Dark Ages. If you try to maintain the status quo with so much new data, it appears like a random spirit has been placed among you trying to undermine.
Like today, we generate and collect huge amounts of differential data, beyond the rate we analyze. Old ideas or integrations are maintained, but everyone can see these fall short, through bits and pieces in the accumulating data. One fudges the status quo with concept of random.
There is a decline in culture, because conscious use of the right brain is lacking behind the left brain. The right brain could take advantage of all this data collection, but it is not allowed, since the left brain will use a traditional dogma integration and random to takes the place of free style integration; organic. The Golden Age was organic integration.