[MarchHare]

Basically, it comes down to you to provide the evidence of which non-religious group would have driven us forward. In the face of, evidence of non-Christian forces trashing modernity right after the fall of Rome.

Bzzzt, wrong again. While the West was going through the Dark Ages after the fall of the (Christian) Roman Empire, many early scientific advancements -- particularly in the field of astronomy -- were prominent in the Islamic world.

During the Middle Ages, astronomy was mostly stagnant in medieval Europe, at least until the 13th century. However, astronomy flourished in the Islamic world and other parts of the world. This led to the emergence of the first astronomical observatories in the Muslim world by the early 9th century.[15][16][17] In 964, the Andromeda Galaxy, the nearest galaxy to the Milky Way, was discovered by the Persian astronomer Azophi and first described in his Book of Fixed Stars.[18] The SN 1006 supernova, the brightest apparent magnitude stellar event in recorded history, was observed by the Egyptian Arabic astronomer Ali ibn Ridwan and the Chinese astronomers in 1006. Some of the prominent Islamic (mostly Persian and Arab) astronomers who made significant contributions to the science include Al-Battani, Thebit, Azophi, Albumasar, Biruni, Arzachel, Al-Birjandi, and the astronomers of the Maragheh and Samarkand observatories. Astronomers during that time introduced many Arabic names now used for individual stars.[19][20] It is also believed that the ruins at Great Zimbabwe and Timbuktu[21] may have housed an astronomical observatory.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomy

The Islamic Golden Age is traditionally dated from the mid-8th to the mid-13th century A.D. (sack of Baghdad by Hulagu, the grand-son of Gengis-Khan).[1][2] During this period, artists, engineers, scholars, poets, philosophers, geographers and traders in the Islamic world contributed to agriculture, the arts, economics, industry, law, literature, navigation, philosophy, sciences, sociology, and technology, both by preserving earlier traditions and by adding inventions and innovations of their own.[3] Howard R. Turner writes: "Muslim artists and scientists, princes and laborers together made a unique culture that has directly and indirectly influenced societies on every continent."[3]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Golden_Age