Nothing like a good discussion, lol.
I do believe that you can be an atheist anti-materialist just as well as a religious one. The Bible hardly tells you to not enjoy wealth and prosperity. It just tells you to not base your life on it.
You can be a completely atheistic or non-christian hippie flipper living in a collective where you share the same mug too, though.
Whether we consider religion as the traditional interpretation of a particular belief system and scriptures as the basis for something or rather the result is an interesting discussion, though.
If your statement hadn't been about the result (churches, religions...) but rather the basis, the philosophy, the teachings, the viewpoint of one or more scriptures that are considered 'holy' or 'inspired', I would agree. The error of many people deciding to reign and rule over many more people does however often tend to lead to accumulation of wealth, not seldomly at expense of the actual message they are trying to convey or preach.
-M
