Is Buddhism a religion?

We often face a question whether buddhism is a relgion or philosophy. Before going into it, we should better be clear about religion. What is a relgion, anyway?

As we see the world religions except Buddhism, we see that there is a belief that this world is created by an Almighty God and He is the ultimate creator. What we should do is to please Him. That's what the other religions teach us. And in fact, there is no logical proof of this belief and very often this religions contradict to science. Since there is no convincing proof for the beliefs like science has, so we can say that religion is merely a blind faith. But science alone cannot satisfy the human needs. It only provides solutions to physical world. The human mind needs something to fight back against fear, hatred, jealousy, depression and other mental defilement. That's what religion is providing. It is consolating the human mind that don't worry. Just pray to the Almighty God, He will take care of your problems, fears, depressions. When human mind finds someone as a reliever for his anxieties and worries, he becomes much more calm and satisfied. That's the mechanism of a religion. 

But in that case Buddhism is an outcast. In fact we cannot call it as a religion. Because it doesn't compel us to pray to Almighty God. Actually there is no notion of Almighty God in Buddhism. This is what makes the Buddhism outstanding. In fact the originator of Buddhism, the Buddha never called his doctrine as Buddhism. Rather He called it the Dhamma. Dhamma means nature, characteristic. It's the nature of every human being. Nature of every living thing. Nature of everything in this universe. Like Newton's law of Gravitation, that is applicable to everything. It's universal. Thus Buddha revealed the actual law of nature or the nature of the universe. He says that every action has its own fruit and the doer must receive the fruit of what he has done. Action and reaction. Sounds familiar to Newton's third law that says every action has an equal and opposite reaction. In fact, it is the real law of nature. 

So what have we seen? We have seen that Buddhism is not a religion, it's just like other scientific laws that reveals the nature of everything in this universe. And very amazing is that it is not bound to physical world like the present science, rather it exceeds beyond the physical world to the deep of the human mind and revealed its secrets. 

So Buddhism isn't a religion. It's nature!