What if christianity never existed ?

[The Grand Nudger]

I'm aware that king Henry split with the catholic church to form the church of England, but I'm unaware of any specific progression because of that.

From what I know it was still basically a church in control of the country.

It was a king in control of a church.  A subjugation of the religious hegemony present until that point to a political will.  In any case, this didn't just happen in Britain, you realize?  

As I say I can't elaborate on what I don't know but to put the separation of church and state down to battling sects within a religion seems oversimplified to me.

I see we're talking secularism now, instead of scientific advancement.  Doesn't really matter....as this infighting paved the ground for that as well.  There could -be- no secularizing effect so long as a unified church maintained control of europe.

Just from some slight reading up on the topic the founding of America seems to have some part in this.  

As an american..I'd love to take the credit...but like so many ideas our founding fathers had...it was borrowed. 

I wouldn't say that was a result of there being a lack of co operation between Christians but because there was a geographical location people could flee to in order to escape religious persecution and they based the news laws of the land on a fear of a lack of freedom of religion which they just escaped from.

In europe, prior to the reformation..there -was- no geographic location one could flee to in order to escape the one true church...except, perhaps (and amusingly) moorish spain.  That we based our new laws on any sort of religious freedom is a bit of a whitewashing. We happily proceeded to persecute people for their religious differences, real or imagined. We just didn't like being -the persecuted-.

And that's just one other layer to the many that I'm sure there are of how the church became separate from the state.

Complicated, sure, but not so complicated that one cannot point to definitive moments in history that lead to it. The christian schism of the 16th century (which extended well into and influenced the events of the next two centuries) made the possibility for people to break away from ancient hegomony a reality, both politically and scientifically. That "islam is bad too, mmkay" doesn't detract from, lessen, or make any refutation of that simple fact. There neither was nor is anything objectively "better" about christianity relative to islam. Christianity did not build this world you inherited...it's fall did. As such, I..personally, see no reason to defend it (competently or incompetently) against it's current competitors for what was nothing other than centuries of obstruction, oppression, and base ignorance.