Right you can do this. Every religion pretty much does. Our founder said a bunch of stuff. We only take the parts that we want.

I am not faulting people for doing this, my point is you can’t claim that what is discarded isn’t part of what was there. Yes, you can be a secular Buddhist but that won’t change at all that the practice of Buddhism for 25 centuries included and still includes literal gods. And I question if you can even call it Buddhism if it doesn’t have rebirth.

Shrug. It’s a bit weird to me. Like latecomers gatekeeping. They been doing their thing for 25 centuries and a bunch of westerners show up and tell them what Buddhism is really really about. With the justification that since the record keeping was bad it can be whatever we say it is. Meanwhile the culture tradition being borrowed from is clear and in disagreement with what Secular Buddhist claims it says.

Mara is not a metaphor to anyone before the year 1950 or so. Mara was a literal god. Same can be said about all their core concepts.