I stumbled into this interesting, somewhat scholarly essay: WHAT IS RELIGION? by Prof. Thomas A. Idinopulos. A quote:
...take the case of Theravada Buddhism. Here is a something called "religion" which is not a religion. Although Theravada Buddhism is usually included in any book on the world's religions, it is not theistic, recognizes no sacred being or beings, and does not officially encourage worship of Buddha or any "higher being" (despite popular veneration of the Buddha-ideal). Theravada Buddhism appears to be a technique or program for human self-purification or self-fulfillment or self-negation. If the word religion is attached to Theravada Buddhism, it must be done so loosely as to allow the differences from other religions to prevail.
What then are we to do about the books like those of the late Alan Watts, Aldous Huxley, and more recently Huston Smith, that stress the similarities of religion? Such works will always be in demand because human beings want to believe that there is an inner core of common religious meaning that provides an intelligible unifying structure of meaning to the bewildering multiplicity of world religions. No matter how much we stress the differences among religions, the public desire for assurance about religious unity will inspire authors to continue to invent overarching pseudo-philosophical categories like "Eternal Wisdom," "Universal Spirit," or "Cosmic Soul," and promote them as the "truth" to which the various religions point. Perhaps there is a universal religious truth and perhaps there is not. If there is, however, I believe we should look for it not in what a religion asserts as truth but in how it asserts its truth. As we shall see in discussing W. C. Smith's ideas, it is form not content that religions have in common.
There are other problems in comparing religions...
