However, it is true that without God a society lacks a moral safety net. Numerous studies have indicated that religion functions as both a safety net and a ceiling for the possibilities of human nature. Without religion individuals lack a moral safety net to prevent many individuals from acting upon their impulses. When religions are overly rigid, they cause a stifling of creative impulse and the higher functions of human nature that arise out of the freedom of impulse.
Individuals become authoritarian, rigid, lack creativity, etc.
The problems of the West arise because it has drifted from its Judeo-Christian moral foundation. Muslims countries have not drifted so far from Islam. However, the oppressive legalism of Islam so stifles human nature that nearly every higher creative impulse has been destroyed or submerged. It has become a desert religion that creates an intellectually oppressive desert of the human mind and soul. Nearly every scientific advancement has come from the West.