This concept stems back to Adam Smith, a man who lived with his mom all his life, never held a job other than in Academia, and lived in an England sustained by colonial commodities’ extraction. It makes sense, then, that to him, Economy looked like a Divine Mystery. He didn’t know how enterprises were planned, where goods came from, how they were processed, who’d buy them and why. That is to say, he wasn’t aware of the political planning behind raw goods’ acquisition, the orchestration and science behind manufacturing, the original realities and incentives of the places that made English surplus possible, nor the realities and incentives of the very concrete people who everyday made decisions at the bazar. Removed from all this, the market was indeed “a God” to him, and in the same situation, you’d probably have a similar perspective.

Have you actually read The Wealth of Nations? Smith was well aware of how the enterprises of his day were planned, where goods came from, how they were processed, and how markets worked. His argument proceeds from that intimate knowledge. Smith argued, that, counterintuitively to most people of his era, markets should be allowed to work, and that countries shouldn't engage in mercantilist policies to hoard "specie" (gold and silver). He argued that the true wealth of nations came from trade and industry, not shiny metals, and that the way to increase the wealth of a nation was to encourage the development of markets and commerce rather than mercantilist policies that accumulated shiny metal coins at the expense of trade. While Smith may have seen divine providence in the working of the market, that doesn't imply that he was unaware of the practicalities of trade, no more than Isaac Newton's belief in biblical numerology invalidates his ideas regarding the analysis of infinetesimals.

Furthermore, Smith's belief in the power of free markets and free exchange led him to be a staunch anti-colonialist. Smith was one of the first British writers to speak out against the depradations of the East India Company, arguing that the company was making money because it had the backing of the British monarchy, and therefore was able to engage in state-like looting via its private armies and navies, rather than making wealth from free exchange. He correctly identified that the East India Company would require ever increasing amount of subsidy from the state, which would have deleterious results for both the company and Great Britain.