[dhimes]

Regarding you second point, I am not sure I see the value of saying "Buddhism is not a religion if you ignore the religious bits"... you might well say that about any religion.

Key difference is, the founders and leaders of Judaism and Islam claim to have believed in God. The Buddha did not. A lot of us identify a deity as being core to the idea of being a religion.

That's not to say that sects haven't developed and diverged from the initial beliefs, perhaps in order to build their own communities (or empires). But these are later developments than the teachings set forth by Siddhartha Gautama.