"No deity, then religion is the wrong term"???? Oh, come now. That's completely facile and meretricious. - Sorry, religion involves deity, if your way of life doesn't, than no matter how ritualistic it isn't a "religion" - it's a belief system. All the definitions quoted above agree with me on that. I know that Buddhism is often called a religion, but that doesn't make it so.

Kind of like believing in deity doesn't make it so?

Religion is the organization that stems from it being impossible for anyone to know what in the world deity, should any exist, *wants* - and so the whole tribe of shaman/priest/ess/etc evolved to intercede between deity and individuals. Some interpret signs, some intercede through ritual or prayer, some just plain make stuff up that keeps them in power. But they were necessary to a human society that had faith in deity. The need for a bridge between deistic faith and life (reality, if you will) required it (again, if there were actual *evidence* for what deity wanted, you wouldn't need faith).

Thus you can have faith without religion by dealing directly with your deity, but you can't have religion without faith. You *can* have lots of other social structures, but without deity, it isn't a religion, it's something else.

But even worse, go back to the hunter-gatherers living at bare subsistence level, having just evolved human intelligence; in these structures, meat is hunted, by men, for the community, and most hunts are unsuccessful. Plants are gathered, by women, for their families, and are much more abundant. The social structure depends on reciprocity and detection of deceit, just like any primate group, so being caught lying is "bad" and being fair is "good" (see, no need for deity to tell us this). Thus when there is a successful hunt, the village gets fed before the successful hunter. That means that when hunts are *unsuccessful* (as they often are), ***it is the best hunters who are owed the most food*** - so the best hunters survive the times of famine, which is great for the society.
But then along comes someone who says, hey, I know what your deity wants. Now, they are the ones getting fed, by people who are saying Please, I don't know what deity wants!
Who's going to survive the famine now?
Who's going to be poor - will it be the poorest/worst hunters, as it "should" be? No, it will be the ones who pay everything they have to the powerful interceder.

Then if they add things like The meek will inherit the earth, why on earth would you ever be unmeek and stand up for yourself?

OK, I've had coffee today, sorry, I don't usually. But you see where I am.