any dimension of human pursuit can fall victim to ignorance and dogma

You make your own deity at that point, the ideal person.

and if you pick favorites then you are falling victim to your own personal dogma

Self defense is not dogma.

They literally listen to people that tell them that I need to die.

you believe something to be true even though you do not possess the capacity to know it, and even in defiance of evidence to the contrary

you can say it is in self defense, that doesn't change the fact

I am prepared to retaliate reciprocally. If they advocate my destruction, I shall advocate theirs. If they leave me alone, good, I don't care.

it's useful to say a gun is always loaded, but it's also more truthful to understand that as being subjective over realistic

I want them to quit talking about taking action against apostates. Because when one listens to the words of a religion, they tend to feel compelled to agree.

that's the line I draw in the sand between a religious belief and dogmatic belief

and yes Islam is a textbook example of a dogmatic political structure

Communism is also another example

When a religion goes into detail about HOW to kill me, I do not need convincing that it means it literally as a manual of operation.

Buddhists are weird but they tend to not kill many people, at least no more than we usually do already, so I don't care what they do.

although communism is more political than religious, it is still fully dogmatic

Depends on what you think religion is,

the ritual action of a belief

Then most things are religion.

it's best to understand that sooner rather than later

We don't exercise conscious thought for many tasks once we learn how to perform them. We essentially perform rituals all day.

Yes we do, we perform all kinds of rituals in pursuit of an ideal

We do not consider how or why it worked, but we got the result, so we continue with the ritual, fully believing that it will always get us the good result. This leads to a loss of caution over time.

I believe in balance. Not in a Buddhist way, or Taoist. But pragmatically. I do however believe in ideas that are so beneficial to humanity as a whole that I am perfectly willing to fight and die for them, irrationally.

Many see this as having no stance at all, which is dumb.

Though I suppose the stance of not taking too much of a stance, is a bit more complicated than the average ideal.

I have studied Buddhism, and a little bit of Taoism but not much. I know a girl that's Hindu and follows the vedas.

They are considered more of a philosophy, and they do have their own dogmas for sure

Hindu is DEFINITELY a religion.

there is a lot of corruption in India between politics and religion

Taoism is as well. Buddhism is like... A strange half-religion.

she is Hindu but she is Buddhist

or she believes in a lot of Buddhist philosophy

and Hindu is also kind of like Jewish in where it is also an ethnicity as well as a religion

Yeah Buddhism has elements of religion but also lacks other parts you expect in a religion.

so she comes from a hindu background but she is more Buddhist and also reads the vedas

I think that they are all wrong precisely because they have religious tendencies. Except Buddhism actually.

well you can't be wrong if you don't ever put your money on the table

Buddhism encourages the thing I dislike religion for. Introspection and exploration.

Religion almost universally shackles you.

Tells you to introspect everything BUT THE RELIGION.