I'll have to respectfully disagree with the hairsplitting semantics concept. I think religion is a product of highly developed primate culture. Other animals have 'beliefs' but they don't have religion. My cat 'believes' in the existence of the physical world. It believes that periodically the red bowl in the corner of the kitchen will contain edible material and it carries out its life in accord with this belief. My cat does not have religion. It worships no gods, believes in no afterlife (something I forgot to include in my original list), reads no bible.
Most of the cats beliefs seem correlated with the immediate sensual presence of objects, but it must believe that these objects exist when not in its immediate presence because the cat will return to the room looking for food in the bowl.
I think the fact that we have language expands the kinds of things we can think about. Cats don't have math but we do because we can abstract from our immediate experience. Just because can can create and use math doesn't mean that we have to, nor that we necessarily think that math is good. I think the same kind of situation applies to religion. We can create religion because of our highly developed linguistic abilities and we can use it. But this doesn't mean we have to think it is good nor does it compel us to use it. We can think in supernatural terms, like most religions do, or we can think in natural terms, seeking explanations for events and our lives in material terms. In other words, we can adopt the metaphysics of the cat and reject the metaphysics of religion.
So, if we call the beliefs of materialistic naturalism religion, then we also have to call the cat religious, and I'm not prepared to do that at the moment.

__________________
1977 300d 70k--sold 08
1985 300TD 185k+
1984 307d 126k--sold 8/03
1985 409d 65k--sold 06
1984 300SD 315k--daughter's car
1979 300SD 122k--sold 2/11
1999 Fuso FG Expedition Camper
1993 GMC Sierra 6.5 TD 4x4
1982 Bluebird Wanderlodge CAT 3208--Sold 2/13