We tend to be harder on the religions with which we live. I believe this is because we can see the lives of the religious (individuals) and can scrutinize them for their hypocrisy. Those religions that are distant (in geography or history) and don't live among us are romanticized and generalized and somehow or other seen as more pure---because we don't see, aren't aware of their inner struggles and impurities.

It is an inescapable fact of history, and its interface with technology, that more and more religions and philosophies are going to come face to face, and there will necessarily be a "survival of the fittest" as the weaker give way to the stronger ideas. Yes, I believe that some philosophies and religions are superior to others----I find it interesting that it is often the same people who, on the one hand find it untenable and irrational that a Christian might still hold to an "archaic" notion, for instance creation, in the face of such a large amount of seemingly contrary, objective evidence, are on the other hand the first to issue outrage that one objectively inferior (from a rational point of view) religion or philosophy would be swallowed up by another.

I think this, as much as any other factor, has contributed to the rise of frenetic terrorism in this age. Inferior philosophies and religions depend on isolation in order to survive. For instance, it wasn't necessarily our military build up and policies that did in the USSR—it had much more to do with an inescapable proliferation of technology that made misleading their people an increasing impossibility for the leadership of the USSR—the people could educate themselves as to the nature and lifestyles of the world outside the USSR.

Terrorists (as a group of wannabe power players) are seeing an end in sight to their ability to effectively lie to those they oppress for their power. Thus, they are trying a panicky two-pronged approach to keeping their power—they are oppressing their people to a greater degree in hopes that the masses never become educated, and they are lashing out in what may be a vain attempt (given the balance of power) to injure those they know have a more workable plan that threatens their power.

It is one of the first things a "cult" does when breaking away from a larger philosophy—isolate. They do so because it is their only hope in standing against the "onslaught" of superior thinking. If the cult was secure in the superiority of its own beliefs it would join, not shun the family of man.

Many religions of the world are oppressing their followers, and they often do so in much more injurious ways than we in the western world think probable (given a few centuries of rational philosophical thought). Ironic though. We see and believe the "oppression" of Christianity but fail to be even equally outraged at the other religions who by our very own objective standards are immeasurably more oppressive.

If not by influence of "Christian" missionaries, these other religions will still fall by the wayside of their own inferiority because the modern world is going to take over any philosophy that cannot amply explain its own existence in the light of a changing world. It's a curious and modern notion that we have—that a culture must be preserved simply because it (currently, or at one time) exists. Also modern is the notion that all cultures are equally valuable and objectively equally "right". Viability is an impersonal, grim reaper.

I tend to be sort of an "evolutionary theologist", that is, I believe that every religion and philosophy should be open to public scrutiny and stand on its own merits. Christianity has a long history of such scrutiny and has often undergone it greatest changes when it thought it could be its most arbitrarily doctrinaire. This also leads me to believe strongly in a barrier between gov't and religion because there will always be conflicting ideas/philosophies/religions and these must be "fought" in the realm of the mind in order to most effectively move us forward as a race.