Well, he got to a point where he believed "If I chant hard enough X will happen". No buddy, it doesn't work that way. And he did attribute a few life events to chanting, i.e. "it happened only because I chanted". No dice for me.
Yeah, that's pretty silly. For me that sort of tool is all about getting your mind straight so it can do it's job and you can better take control of your circumstances through personal action.
Essentially I don't believe in things that cannot be proven (I.e. rebirth, gods). Enlightenment and shit (which is what Buddhism feels like to me) is cool and seems like a worthy cause.
For me those are separate areas of study. It's one thing to prove that everyday objects are made of the elements and that they form different chemical structures that imbue them with different properties. But how do you prove that something is meaningful? How do you determine what's good or bad?
I'd like to think everyone has an intuition about those things, but (at best) that's a primitive way to look at something. So I wonder if right now we're still muddling through a stone age when it comes to how we relate to the world and each other. From that perspective, I don't 'believe' in any of it. I just look for tools that I can use and perhaps improve upon.