A religion is considered as a system of belief. And, the word belief, in its definition carries a sense of one's feelings that a certain thing is true. It's only a feeling, not a proof of its being true.

Therefore, a system of belief may or may not be true. There are possibilities of many of the things related to religion to be true or false. Many of the things may or may not stand the test of reason.

And, anything that does not stand the test of reason is superstition, nothing else.

This way, all religions contain many superstitions. And there is no point in following those superstitions even in the name of religion, because it is potentially harmful. It defeats the basic purpose of a religion which seeks to elevate and benefit us.

Then there are many darker spots in all religions that spring up evils instead of goodness. Everybody knows this and therefore there is no need of giving any example. They are numerous.

This is precisely the cause that people are yet miserable. One can find any number of followers of any religion who spent almost whole their life in pursuit of The Bliss, but could never experience it in their lives. Even saints can be found who spent years in sainthood, but never experienced The Bliss. They, in fact, are more interested in roots and chaffs rather than the grain.

They are misled by such superstitions and the darker spots, which they mistakenly took for religion.

Then, there are many who are interested in grains and emphasize on virtues of religions. However, most of them emphasize too much virtues resulting in emergence of evils out of it. There are numerous examples. When in India, we put too much emphasis on chastity of women, we got an inhuman Sati System. The emergence of Muslim terrorism is a more recent example that is being nurtured with too much emphasis on Islam. There is no religious group on this earth that did not caused many evils to spring up from too much emphasis on their virtues.

Then, there is no religion which teaches its follower to foolishly follow their tenets. Their primary object was, in fact, to make us wise, which we have defeated by our own foolishness.

However, Dharm is the essence. It does not allow any superstition and foolishness. It is not a system of belief but a system of reason. Reason is the first test of Dharm. It, in its definition, is bound to have truth in it, truth and only truth, nothing else. Therefore, there is no scope for any bias or darker spot.

Therefore, Dharm is different from religion. A religion has limitations and it is applied on only a particular group of people, while Dharm is all encompassing. It applies to all irrespective of religions, because it is the truth for all the time - the past , the present and the future. It is a most secular thing and it has no quarrel with any religion whatsoever, because all religions ultimately lead to this.