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Buddhism is not even a religion under most dictionary definitions. There are no gods in buddhism.

• mbrock 11y ago
  That's kind of... factually incorrect. As far as I know, all Buddhist traditions recognize gods and demons. They also recognize the Buddha as a "teacher of gods and men." It is absolutely a religion -- or possibly a few different religions. Since sometime in the late 1800s there have been pretty strong movements of what's often called "Buddhist modernism." A scholar of Buddhism named David McMahan wrote a good overview called "The Making of Buddhist Modernism" explaining the historical forces that shaped this development. It's also related to movements sometimes called "Protestant Buddhism." The Buddhist movements in the West have mostly been strongly influenced by such modernization. And there is a kind of spectrum of religiosity in the way Buddhism is practiced in these contexts. The secular mindfulness movement is an offshoot of a highly secularized form of Buddhism mostly transmitted from Burma via a group of American meditators. And so on! I mean, it's a complex topic, and the contemporary notion that you propose is definitely an oversimplification.