[tbastos]

Just goes to show his honesty :-) "One is not to trust my teachings implicitly but to test them oneself and evaluate their effects." — Buddha (thus making Buddhism perhaps the only "religion" not plagued by faith and dogma, and kind of disseminating the scientific method)

[nsomaru]

Buddhism is not the only religion not plagued by faith and dogma.

Faith and dogma exist wherever people have outsourced their ability to think. 'Buddhists' do this too, just as some adherents to other faiths do too.

On a side note, the intellectual portions of Vedic literature often emphasise the need for viveka (knowledge, discrimination) and prashnena (questioning) which are requisite qualities of a shisya (student). Arguably, much of Buddhist metaphysics is based on these Upanishadic texts (Vedanta).

[tbastos]

Buddha himself was clearly against faith and dogma, and also considered metaphysics irrelevant to the human condition. If you consider Buddhism to be the original teachings, then it's obvious dogma has no place in it, and a person afflicted by dogma could always be pointed to the original teachings. More religious branches of Buddhism exist, but they are blatant bastardizations of the original teachings. This is very different from the situation in other religions, where the original scriptures are the main sources of dogma galore.