Most human beings are allergic to light. Light in life is insight, wisdom. Wisdom does not brook mechanical existence. Insight reveals inconvenient truths and asks embarrassing questions. All this gives rise to a belief system.
Belief is inevitable, as are axioms in mathematics and a boat to cross the seas.
But only the blind reconcile themselves to an existence in darkness. Wisdom leads those who are endowed with insight to the realization of the belief. Such a realization is a mere step beyond the belief-system. It is a healthy state of ignorance which reveals that there is a light at the other end of the tunnel. Belief is religion, belief is dharma in the sense of established religion - full of doctrines, theories, and so on.