I don't think "religious dogma" is narrow enough terminology to describe what is going on. The real distinction is between system-based and teacher-based ideas

I don't think "religious dogma" is narrow enough terminology to describe what is going on. The real distinction is between system-based and teacher-based ideas and practices. With a system-based idea (such as Newtonian mechanics), you can learn it and use it correctly merely by reading some set of canonical works. Everything you need to know is in a book, and if you understand the book correctly you get the right results out of it. Agile, on the other hand, seems to me to be much more teacher-based. If you want to know if you're doing Agile right, you have to talk with an Agile expert, and your own understanding is always under threat of being declared "not Agile" by the experts. The choice between approaches is a tradeoff, IMO, there's not one best way. Interactive teaching is better at accurately providing the state-of-the-art opinions and practices of experts, while systematic ideas are much more testable and falsifiable. If you want to copy what a successful expert does, go talk with the expert; if you want to know whether the expert is right or not, read their book.