Religion, Dogma, and the Ancient "Gods"

I submitted a comment this morning on the American Thinker site, in response to another comment there which stated that "Communism is a religion." I wanted to distinguish between a "religion" (an institutionalized set of beliefs about God and man's relation to Him/Her--ancient man at one time worshipped the Goddess as the Highest) and "religiously-held ideas" (which includes those that do not purport to come from God, but are held inviolable, unquestionable, by their believers). Because false, divisive (to the point of war) dogmas are showing themselves generally ascendant over honest reason in the world now, I also wanted to inform of one or two points my research and discoveries have led me to uncover about the development of the idea and practice of religion among men--the history of religion--and which I think modern man needs to be aware of, for the sake of truth itself and for a thorough, competent understanding of the all-encompassing "Great Design" I found, which began and, for most of history, directed it all.

We are getting into needing to distinguish between religion and good old-fashioned, unquestioned dogma. The latter is rampant in the world today--many, inherently divisive, dogmas abound--and includes, but is not limited to, the dogmas of the various religions. A religiously-held dogma can be just as bad, but not the same thing, as a religious dogma (which purports to come from God). As someone just pointed out above, Islam is not a MORAL religion in the sense of modern Christianity, and is basically a cult of lies, claiming to rule--by coercion, not reason or faith--over every aspect of human life; as such, it is really a throwback to ancient religions, which WERE immoral, coercive state religions (based upon fear of the "jealous and capricious gods" like Zeus, and maintained by "god-kings", ruling by "divine right"). In contrast, modern religion, as a system teaching positive morals rather than "fear of the Lord", was reborn only in the 2nd and 1st millennia BC, in reaction to the hideous outrages of one ravaging Empire after another, through most of that time. The separation of Church and State in the late-appearing U.S.A. is a huge advance in human civilization, and I believe is in fact the proper basis for "U.S. exceptionalism"; it allows for the very flowering of the "inalienable rights" of man.

Communism is not a religion, it is a religiously-held ideology or philosophy (although the latter word, meaning "love of knowledge", is a ridiculous, pretentious title to give to communism).

-------------

The person who I was responding to responded in turn--and predictably, by insisting upon his dogma, thereby unintentionally underlining my point, that dogma is ascendant over honest reason today.