Ah, straw man. A nice bookend to my academic colleagues who constantly accuse me of being too "Eastern."

The irony in your statement is that the rest of what you say indicates that your view of Buddhism is completely Western, ignoring the Tipitaka canon, Therevada and Mahāyāna Buddhism. I am not ignoring those core doctrinal sources. Would you say that Nāgārjuna had a "Western academic view?"

I love that religions evolve and blend in with new cultures, but the regrettable side effect of that is that devotees of new forms of religion denounce the original form as untrue. That seems to be part of what you are doing here as I talk about Buddhism in its original form and even though I am being critical of it, you are saying that's not Buddhism, when in fact, it is.