"Does the Pope run the United States Government..or the British Government, or the United Nations? Authority is only valid to those who are subjected to it. Simple as that. "
Well, that doesn't make any sense, because Governments only have the power to decide things within their own territories, and even then, they only have the power to say what they think and what they will enforce... no power in the Universe could possibly make them able to state, overridingly, what is or is not true.
"This is getting into the whole "relativity" argument again. Clearly you have a relativistic view of right/wrong. And you have a right to believe what you wish. "
More fool you- because I don't think right/wrong is relative at all, and if you read what I say properly, you will see that I am preaching absolutism here- the Government doesn't actually have the ability to definitvely state what is absolute; theirs is just another opinion that might be wrong compared to that absolute. If I was being relative, I would say there wasn't any right or wrong in te first place.
"as I stated before if one does not have the power to administer their opinion as law, then their opinion means nothing. "
Gibberish. If you don't have the power to administer it... that only means you don't have the power to administer it. Your opinion might be exceptionally valid indeed, just not currently enforced.
Nazi Germany held that Jews should be exterminated. Plenty in Germany disagreed, but had no power to change what the Nazis thought. Did that meant their opinion meant nothing? Of course not- morally speaking, their opinion meant a very great deal.
The amount of times Governments have been wrong about things- regardless of their power to enforce their incorrect beliefs- are many.
"Buddhism is defined as a religion in the Dictionary, Encyclopedia, and by the Tibetan Government.(check their website)"
All three might well do- I don't really care. There are people that will hold all those definitions to be wrong because they believe in the word of another. Dictionary, Encylopedia, website... all are opinion only, they have no magical ability to be correct, no more than the Pope or Dalai Lame do, as you say... no cosmic force came to any of them and declared them the holders of absolute truth. All three sources you give were just written by people contributing what they thought was right. Same with Government- their only qualification is that they came to power; that gives them no automatic ability to know what is right at all either, only to state policy.
It is simply down to how much people believe them. Lots of people put their belief in dictionaries and encyclopedias based on their faith in the people who wrote them. But plenty of people believe the Pope and Dalai Lama more than the dictionary or encylopedia or any other source, based on their faith in those people. They might be wrong. Or the encyclopedia might be wrong. Both might be wrong, for that matter There might not be anyone, anywhere, who has gotten it right at all yet. But none can claim, at base, to have more power to be right than the other.
In fact, rather a lot in this area comes down to your definition of religion, which is going to be individual to each person.
"Quite frankly, anything that one devotes much time to in an idealistic way, with zeal/reverence/and devotion can be classified as a religion. "
If that is your definition of a religion, then yes, Buddhism is definitely one. But the definition of religion is disputed (for example, many dictionaries would challenge the definition you just gave), and furthermore, by the definition many use for religion now, Buddhism does not always seem to fit it. Hence the debate about whether it really is one or not. There is a very reasonable body of opinion that says it is not. Whether that becomes official in future or not we shall see in future.
"This all goes back into that relativity argument Ush, and you pretty much know where I stand on that. The bottom line is this. One can not declare themselves an authority on anything..unless someone gives them the "authority" to do so."
Authority is given by people. Governments don't have any magic powers that give them authority- it is given by people. And plenty of people invest that authority, when it comes to dictation of religious matters, not in Government but in religious leaders. Again, the power of Government to enforce what they believe is irrelevant to that. All that means is that they can enforce it; it has no bearing on the truth of the matter.
(Not to mention that the Pope holds authority also- excommunication will remove you from the Catholic church, regardless of what any Government thinks)
And again- nothing to do with relativity at all, which again as I have told you so many times, is not something I believe in. You are an absolutist- why do you believe Governments have the ability to know what those absolutes are? They can state policy, they can enforce that policy, but their policy might still be mistaken. The power to enforce is not the power to be right.
They can state, definitvely, what they officially consider to be a religion or not inside their state... but 'offiical' only means what the Government thinks and enforces... it still doesn't make it any more fundamentally right.
Some places don't consider Christianity a religion- in fact, would imprison you for suggesting it was. Now, this makes Christianity illegal in their country. It means that the Government does not consider it a religion. It probably means, because a lot of people in those countries have faith in the Government, that a lot of people in that country would not consider Christianity a proper religion.
But... does that actually have any effect on whether Christianity is, ultimately, a religion or not? No. No human opinion can actually change the absolute fact of whether Christianity is a religion or not.
It's the same with Buddhism. Either Buddhism is a religion or it is not- that's an absolute. The opinion of any Government will not change that ultimate fact. Nor will the opinion of the Pope or Dalai Lama. But people will continue to believe that one source or the other is more likely to be right- and plenty of such people choose the Pope or the Dalai Lama based on the fact that they think Pope/Lama have more of a call to be correct about such things. Once more, the ability of the Government to enforce will make no difference to this- enforcement is irrelevant to being right or wrong. So it goes.
So I am very surprised at you, being an absolutist, thinking that the possible contradictory opinions of various Governments might comprise truth. I mean, if a country like the UK or US one day states that Buddhism is not a religion, it puts your position in a difficult area, doesn't it? You can't say in an ultimate sense that in country x, Buddhism is, objectively speaking, a religion, but in country y it is not; you could only say that country x considers it a religion, and country y does not. Objectively speaking, Buddhism either is or is not in both, so one country or the other would be wrong, both in thinking and in enforcing otherwise.