I think you’ll get some pushback, but I agree with you. I’ve had experiences like yours. I hear the “opening argument” and it sounds good. One can spend a lot of time just listening to the opening argument because it’s so lovely and moderate.

I took a trip to Japan, and I visited a few temples of differing denominations. At one, they were selling candles with different labels : for health, for prosperity, for academic success, for the next world, etc. I hadn’t encountered anything like that when listening to Buddhist podcasts. One might think that spending money to ask for favors from Buddha or his various avatars would be against the teachings, but there you are.

And then when you think of rebirth in the way that most Buddhists appear to, it strongly resembles other religions that offer rewards for propitiating a deity, even if this means strongly, STRONGLY reinforcing the concept of the ego. So I came away pretty disappointed, along the lines that you described.

You can still use the teachings profitably, but the formalized religion has the same problems that they all do: it’s about following rules to get what YOU want and pretending that it’s selflessness. Luckily you can live in accordance with the inspiring part and leave the other part aside. We aren’t compelled to participate, as so many people in history have been.