I have always thought of buddhism as being non religious and I believe the western version mostly is but I understand that in some eastern disciplines they do worship a diety of sorts so could be considered a religion.

@Moravian Take the deities out of non-fundamentalist Christianity and you are left with another decent moral code.

@Petter That's debatable. Do you mean the commandments which are mostly about worshiping a diety or the golden rule which long predates Christianity ?.

@Moravian Commandments regarding deities would automatically be taken out, wouldn't they? However, we would still have the following, amongst others:-

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife.
Nor the ox her husband bought her.
But thanks be thou art not forbidden
To covet thy neighbour's daughter.

@Petter Like it

Define your terms. Buddhism, like Confucianism, Taoism, paganism, etc. has most of the characteristics of traditional monotheistic religions, just without a supreme deity. They have communities, priests, sacred texts, holidays, etc. Sounds like a religion to me.

The USA is well behind Europe in religious realism.

My son,.a devout atheist, is a member of his local church choir. His philosophy is "Why should only Christians have all that good music on?" His local vicar now says all churches should welcome atheists - it keeps the church from getting carried away with itself.

They should indeed all have the same rights and privileges - and these shoild be identical to those of any secular organisation. Namely the right to pay taxes, the right to be sued, the right to be criticised, the right to ....... etc.

In Alabama youall gets belted on yo head with the bible at birth, instead of a slap on yo arse,