Would the Arabs have come surging out of their desert oases in the seventh century without the Prophet and his faith to inspire them?
Probably not.
Would Frankish knights have taken ship to recover the Holy Land, if they had not considered it Holy, only a lost province of the Roman Empire?
Almost certainly not. There were, after all, many lost provinces of the Roman Empire.
Would white Europeans have developed science and consensual democracy if they had been only white Europeans, not also Christians?
Tougher to answer. But if we assume that these things (science, democracy) were the products of a particular culture, then any major alteration to that culture raises at least the possibility that its output would also be different. I have to suspect here that Derb is not familiar with just how deeply European or Western culture is intertwined with Christianity. The two cannot be understood apart from each other. He takes a shot at certain modern Christians for failng to understand this, so it’s odd that he seems not to grasp it himself. I know that he is a believer in the importance of culture in the world and on the individual level.
Of course Derb has been affecting a deliberately contrarian aspect of late, so I think a good portion of what he says is simply a (successful) attempt to wind people up.
