generaly:
the only reason why the "west" is more advanced than the "east" is because we seperated religion from scientific development enought to allow progression.
If the ottomans had taken over europe, their would have been no need for a renassance, but they didnt, we had one, and the collapse of the ottoman empire shoved everyone into the religious state kind of government, wich is a stupidity of saying: a bloke several thousands of years before realy realy knew what we need right now and so we should consider this humans written interpritation of the words of a "god" -read deasert mushrooms that are notoriously hallucinagenic- as law in a time were their just not realy relevant anymore.
The only good part of religion is its clear definition of moral princables in general, its bad part is a fair bit of the rest -ie must have been god who made all this so perfect world, you know, because its so good that we have to hide and abuse our women and shoot each other over a sentance over a thousand or two years old, pluss other stupiditys and self contradictions riddling almost every religion-, and its stubbern inflexability to provide for a situation like abortion, wich, even if considerd murder to some, is still another persons life and none of your damn buisness to comment on. would you burst into someones bedroom and inform them on how to preform sex? how to breath? how about you just live their life for them and fuck everything up just so you can feel moraly smug. The world is not perfect, and sometimes its a choice between two evils, not right and wrong.
So long as religion holds sway over the easts governmental processes then they will never advance as far as the west, because the west will just keep going on.
The only major religion i have respect for is buddism:
http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/snapshot01.htmconsidering they hand the judgement of morality to the individual. and before theirs any snide comments on how people will end up bad without a religion defineing good from wrong, consider that morals are influenced by upbringing by parents, the law wich is decided on by a democratic government in the west anyways, and that if you do try to sod everyone over, theyll sod you over back, its actualy so much easyer to get through life by being good than it is to be bad, when it comes to just getting on with people. sure, you may nick someones wallet or items, but every bad act a human commits even tho small, is still just one act in a chain that feeds into itself. If i help my neighbour, he will help me, if i nick his stuff hell knock my lights out. simple.
Take britain for example: since henry the 8th stuck 2 rods up at the pope and his, they went on to forge an empire and influence the globe over. not that the british are moraly superior, you just ahve to look at the lybian conflic and the afgan conflic to see the goverment their are just oil hungry basterds looking out for BP -wich has refinerys in lybia and a big stake, it would be benefitial for this conflict to end quickly, not that im saying the slaughter of protesters is right, its just being used as a cover reason-
Without the putting aside of religion, the act of slavery would have probably still been going on now. Since it was scientific experimentation that proved beyond doubt that whites and blacks are equal.
Dont even get me onto scientology....