There's no point in just changing the meaning of the word "religion". If you change "religion" or "Christianity" or for that matter "astrology" to mean "not what everyone always said it was, or behaved as, but something different", you simply need a new word for all that stuff (irrational belief in magic solutions to physical problems). But they were there first, they've got the word, and aren't going to let it go.

So by claiming to be "religious" when you don't believe the traditional claims of religion, you are simply muddying the water. And, I'd add, being too lazy, or too cowardly, to face up to breaking with the traditional forms. And, should any advances in the human condition come about because of more advanced views, making it all too easy for the traditionalists to tag along behind, and eventually claim any progress as their own. Note that the Church of England, truly reactionary up to the 1950s, is now claiming liberalism and tolerance as their own invention.

I'd say a religious point of view needs subscription to most of the following:

Major claims:

- The universe was created intentionally by a god or a group of gods.
- The individual human has a spirit which is a separate (if associated) entity from the body, and will continue to exist after the body's death.
- There is a power which will determine the future state of that spirit, punishment or reward in whatever form depending on the behaviour of the body/ spirit complex.

This belief usually entails a number dependent claims, which are the ones that make religion both powerful and dangerous:

- The rewardable behaviour includes an acceptance of ordinances which have been transmitted, usually in the form of ancient texts, by that power. These include taboos on behaviour, usually sexual or trophic.
- It is desirable that the state should be structured to give those taboos the force of law.

Anything I've misssed out? Anyone claim to be religious without agreeing with most of that?