"Is religion compatible with belief in God?"

Compatible???? Seems like an odd choice of words in that sentence.

Some religions require belief in God, a god, or various gods. Other's don't. Some are based on worshipping the powers of Nature. Some are philosophical and ethical treatises, and do not advance the idea of any kind of deity at all, but of a coherent and rational order of things. Some political religions are officially absolutely against all "religion", and yet they go through all the same outward motions and psychological exercises, such as: having holy books that all members must read and live by, having sacred rituals that all members must participate in, demanding exclusive loyalty to the order, wearing symbols and clothing that reflect the order, following rigid rules set out by the order, idolizing the prophets and founders of the order and setting up graven images of them for the faithful to bow down to, aggressively prosyletizing to convert the rest of humanity and making war on those who resist, etc...

And yet they claim to be against religion! Ha! I find this tragically funny...or maybe just tragic, period. They are the very thing they despise and wish to stamp out, they just don't know it. They succeed in matching and even outdoing some of the most fanatical religions in recorded history. Who comes to mind? Well, the Soviets, the Maoists, and Pol Pot, to mention 3 examples.

The Nazis were another example of a fanatical political religion, although they did not claim to be against traditional Christian religion...in fact they made much use of it in encouraging their troops and their citizenry...but it was quite clear that their real religion was to worship the Nazi Party, its philosophy, its symbols, and its founders. Their tolerance of the conventional forms of Christianity that they willingly accepted and used was a much secondary matter, just a good practical way of helping to motivate the general rank and file in the German population. After all, they were fighting against "Godless Communism", so it was important to emphasize to Germans that the Nazi regime stood for godliness. ;-) (so they pretended...and most of them probably believed it too)

Every German soldier in the regular forces had a belt buckle on which was inscribed the words: "God Is With Us" (in German). And I'm sure most of them believed "He" was. Why wouldn't they? Only the rank and file of soldiers in an officially atheist force like that of the Soviets or Mao would hesitate to assume that God was on their side. ;-) In their case, their peculiar form of faith would cause them to dismiss the concept of "God" utterly and replace it with a quite different set of mental bulwarks...equally rigid, but different labels to believe in.

Seems to me that they all do much the same thing, but they put a different set of outer clothing on it, that's all. They give it different names. They all give themselves over to some remote higher authority, take a huge leap of faith in putting their trust in that higher authority, obey its dictates, follow its orders, and sacrifice themselves upon its bloodstained altar.

I regard it as equally sad in every case, whether or not they call it "God", "the Party", "the Fuhrer", "the King", "The Empire", "the church", or "the Fatherland" that they are killing and dying for.