dogma

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun A doctrine or a corpus of doctrines relating to matters such as morality and faith, set forth in an authoritative manner by a religion.
• noun A principle or statement of ideas, or a group of such principles or statements, especially when considered to be authoritative or accepted uncritically.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun A settled opinion; a principle, maxim, or tenet held as being firmly established.
• noun A principle or doctrine propounded or received on authority, as opposed to one based on experience or demonstration; specifically, an authoritative religious doctrine.
• noun Authoritative teaching or doctrine; a system of established principles or tenets, especially religious ones; specifically, the whole body or system of Christian doctrine, as accepted either by the church at large or by any branch of it.
• noun In the Kantian philosophy, a directly synthetical proposition based on concepts of the understanding.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• noun That which is held as an opinion; a tenet; a doctrine.
• noun A formally stated and authoritatively settled doctrine; a definite, established, and authoritative tenet.
• noun A doctrinal notion asserted without regard to evidence or truth; an arbitrary dictum.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun An authoritative principle, belief or statement of opinion, especially one considered to be absolutely true regardless of evidence, or without evidence to support it.
• noun A doctrine (or set of doctrines) relating to matters such as morality and faith, set forth authoritatively by a religious organization or leader.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun a religious doctrine that is proclaimed as true without proof
• noun a doctrine or code of beliefs accepted as authoritative