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>So in some way, Buddhism doesn't rank that bad on my bad religions list, nearly to the point that it may not even count as a religion. But it does, because of those monks.

Not sure I get this point about monks Dragan. The monks in a Buddhist monastery are not the same as the monks in, for example, a Christian monastery. In a very short and insufficient nutshell Buddhist monks are there to practice an internal control over their own minds via various forms of meditation. To still their minds and to learn control over it. Then to further refine this into being able to let go of concepts like ego and self, and finally to try and understand the world around them intuitively rather than intellectually. It's too short a description but you know the idea. Christian monks on the other hand are primarily involved in thinking about God and spending a lot of time in a monologue with (at) Him/Her/It.

In Buddhism there is no discussion of the idea of God, no bible, no church, no alter. There is nothing about God at all. There is no recourse to the supernatural, no spirits, no heaven or hell. There is only the learning and practice of meditation whose only goal is to focus the mind in the here and now.

Of course, like anything there are those that would commercialize it and like to control it for their own benefit, but that is not Buddhism. I am talking about the core of Buddhism here, not any human failures in practicing it.