Yahoo answers: Buddhists; can you give me the basic out line of yOur religion?

Buddhism fascinates me, especially the part about how it is an atheist religion ( as in no God(s)) and how it encourages education and creativity. An article written by a Buddhist psycyatrist helped me ou of a really dark place in my life. The article was abou elevating guilt and promoting self esteem through Buddhist principles. It was fascinating and inspiring. I feel like Buddhism might be for me.
But what exactly is it all about? Please, I only want answers from buddhists; I want to hear it straight from the horses mouth.

Read this: Good Questions, Good Answers
 
link: http://www.buddhanet.net/pdf_file/gqga-4ed.pdf
 
Hope it will give you the answers you want, a few highlights about buddhism:
 
1. Buddhism rejects the notion or concept of a creator God as we believe in dependent origination, i.e. cause and effects and there is no first cause just like you cannot find the smallest or largest number. Also, buddhism rejects the existence of a self or soul as states of existence arises and falls at every moment where the origination of one moment is dependent on the previous.
 
2. Buddha regards metaphysical or theological speculations as irrelavent and unfruitful to the cultivation of the righteous path (As we can all see, people would quarrel, kill, and conduct other evils because of religious and theological differences which has absolutely nothing to do with the spiritual cultivation of the individual)
 
3. Buddha taught about the 4 noble truths, namely:
 
    1.Suffering exists
    2.Suffering arises from attachment to desires
    3.Suffering ceases when attachment to desire ceases
    4.Freedom from suffering is possible by practising the Eightfold Path
 
 
4. The way to enlightenment is through the middle path, neither extreme sensual pleasure nor asectic self mortifications. This is also called the noble eightfold path, note that 'Right' in this context means not only correct, but also just the right amount i.e. the middle path:
 
http://www.beyondthenet.net/dhamma/nobleEight.htm
 
5. buddhists believe in the notion of cause & effect the same way a newtonian believes but goes even into more profound and deep levels that reach out to everything in the world physical psychological or metaphysical.
 
6.
buddhists believe that Karma should not be taken as destiny or fate (since that will be fatalism) but through your hardwork, the seeds of past bad karma cannot ripen. i.e. Our destiny is in our hands.
 
 
 
7. By means of self control through precepts, one can then go into practicing meditation that is not defiled, then during the highly concentrated state of mind in meditation, one can then focus and contemplate upon the various truths like suffering, impermenance to see reality as it really is to obtain penetrative insights into the truth.
 
8. in 3 sentences this is buddhism:
 
            Do good,
            Do not evil,
            Purify your mind.
 
and in the words of a famous chinese Zen master, "a theory that a 3 year old can understand but not even an 80 year old would practise."
 
 
Some people say that buddhism is a religion
Some people say that buddhism is a philosophy
Some people say that buddhism is both a religion and a philosophy
I personally however believe that buddhism is the truth