It's not hard to be atheist or agnostic and a Buddhist. It's fundamentally a very god-optional religion (though some traditions add them back in, like Jodo Shinshu).
Precisely. I don't care two shits whether God exists or not, frankly--that's not the interesting question. And "scientific materialism" is a bad way to cast it--materialism is a metaphysical system while science is an epistemic system.
I'm nonreligious because I don't believe claims without a good argument behind them. Buddhism is a set of claims without any good arguments just the same as Christianity, whether or not those claims are about gods and resurrected demigods or not.
I agree that's probably true, but I don't understand your point. I was just observing that Buddhists are likely to also be atheists, since the OP seemed to consider overlap unlikely.
Those ideas are not the core of buddhism. Its like saying that christians believe in the easter bunny. They are just historical and cultural baggage that got along for the ride.
Buddhist hell is not a place or something to believe in, but it's an explanation of a certain state of mind. The same for god.
So it's not a tradition or something to believe in (btw it's nothing to believe in buddhism as it'd contradict the basis of a buddhism where you just practice with the guidance of your teacher, you don't believe in things but rather check them).
Btw it's a pity and quite a cultural harm that mistranslations or just inability of western discoverers of buddhism to think beyond some closed view caused spreading lots of bullshit about buddhism.
