Dawkins would agree. He sees religion as simply the organized belief in the supernatural, and he is authorized to ascribe such meanings to the term. Since he can ascribe the meaning of the term, I, too, will ascribe a meaning. Religion, as I see it, is not simply the organized belief in the supernatural because the supernatural is too broad. It describes all of the forces that are beyond what we know as the laws of nature (which are simply observations of the universe that have not changed, however many times we observe them, but could change). This term, supernatural, could include all the obscure things that organized religions would not see as a religious: psychics, magicians (not the entertainment kind), witches. I see religion as the humanly practice of appeasing a god, gods, or God by doing rituals and deeds on Earth. Religion, in that sense, changes over time because each culture has different ways of thinking about their god or God.
For instance, originally Buddhism had one form, which included the 4 nobles truths: all life is suffering, all suffering is caused by desire, desire can only be overcome by nirvana, and the eight-fold path leads to nirvana. Dawkins would agree that Buddhism is a religion. But as Buddhism became more popular, and as it reached farther east from India, Buddhism changed significantly. In Thailand, Shri Lanka, and Myanmar Buddhism remained in its original form, called Theravada Buddhism, or "the way of the elders." In this form, the Buddha has one function: he is a model and a teacher. The Buddha has no supernatural power and cannot help you at all. All that is left is the teachings of the Buddha. But as it stretched farther east (China, Tibet, Vietnam, Japan) the religion changed from the original Indian Theravada Buddhism to something called Mahayana Buddhism. In this form, the Buddha evolved from simply a great teacher to a a great savior. The Buddha, after dying, did not leave earth because of his compassion and decided to stay and give grace to those who struggle.
Why did it change? Because the way China thought about the supernatural was different from the way India thought about the supernatural. Of course it was going to change. All religions change over time.
However, under these understandings of religion (doing in order to be saved from suffering [hell, earth]; seriously evolving over time) should Christianity be considered a religion? Dawkins would say yes. I say no because it does not fit into the mold shaped by all other world religions. It is not focused on doing in order to receive God's forgiveness, or doing in order to evade life's struggles and the evade the torments of the afterlife. Christianity is not focused on doing; rather, it is focussed on receiving. That underlying concept automatically removes it from the other world religions: Buddhism is focussed on doing something in order to gain something (the noble truths, which you have to follow in order to gain nirvana); Islam is focused on the requirements one must follow in order to gain eternal life, namely daily prayer, giving alms to the poor, abstinence from the fleshly desires during the month of Ramadan and the journey to Mecca, and even the Shi'ite and Sunni concept of Jihad (equivalent to the english word crusade). Christianity is distinct because Christians understand that idea of reaching up to God, hoping that He grabs our hand to save us, is a religious concept. The Christian concept is God reaching down to us and saving us because we cannot look beyond ourselves without any outside help. It is as if humans are continually looking at the ground, fixed on the things of the earth, and God lifts our head to fix our gaze on him. No other organized group that worships a supernatural being says that we do not save ourselves by the things we do, but are saved by the things God Himself did for us.
This is why Dawkins, Christopher Hitches, and other commit the fallacy of hasty generalization. They are drawing a conclusion about a group of people based on a sampling that not nearly large enough. How often do we hear about Christian Jihads against different Christian denominations, which is essentially how Jihad started in the seventh century. (It was basically a war over who should be considered the proper successor of Muhammad. The Sunni said it should be whoever was best equipped for the position; the Shia said it should be the descendent of Muhammad. Ever since, there has been a holy war between the two.) Hitchens and Dawkins wrongly include Christianity into their concept of religion; a religion is not merely the organized belief in the supernatural, if one takes a closer look. Also, unlike other world religions, which, as we have seen with Buddhism, significantly change over time, Christianity, at its core, has changed very little over 2,000 years. Granted, the denominations today are in the hundreds. However, Christians agree that there is no need to wage a holy war against other denominations because the differences are merely secondary (for the most part). Christianity has changed and does change in different cultures that practice it, but it is not absolutely relativistic. Culture cannot ultimately change the doctrine influencing Christianity because so many understand and trust the inherency of the Bible as the Word of God. But culture has changed the doctrine of Buddhism. So I do think that religion is relativistic in nature, but Christianity is not for some of the reasons above.
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