I know people who are Buddhists without the ideology.It's a good basic starting point to get a discussion going, and everything I sourced from wiki is widely known and corroborated. It comports with everything I have read about Siddhartha.
It also confirms a basic fact I've observed in everyday experience: the American Hollywood stars and urban hipsters have tried to strip away the mystical and religious aspects of Buddhism, and they've tried to turn the Buddha into some kind of secular teacher of wisdom and tranquility