Buddhism is most certainly a religion. However, it is non-theistic in any since that we typically understand in Judeo-Christ0-Muslim terms. Buddhism is commonly refered to as a "philosophy" only because it totally breaks our understanding of "religion." SO, people asign it to the category of "philosophy," which is incorrect as well. I would argue that the Humanistic Buddhist movements in Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam, and other places, are far closer to atheism as we would understand it, yet totally religious in many of the ways that we would understand that... To that degree, I think we must rethink our understanding of religion. religion=bad, atheism=good- seems to fall into the same black and white thinking that makes theists in general so *&%#ing annoying, and dangerous. There are traditions that don't totally fall into this paradigm...but anyway...