The person who wrote this article is a well-established Buddhist scholar who has actually spent years studying in schools, as you say one must, to study the history of Buddhism. Why wouldn't you say they were in a credible position to tell the world what is mythical about Buddhism?
Becoming an orthodox Buddhist even feels like it would be counterproductive if one's purpose is to investigate what is mythical about Buddhism.
In any case, what is being discussed here is the historical person known as the Buddha, not the experience of being raised as an orthodox Buddhist.
The issue I had with the original article is the way it starts by shedding what the author considers as myths.
As I mentioned, to understand Buddha's story, it should be done in the context of the most important teachings of Buddhism which I'm not going to go into here. Its almost like axioms in Mathematics. You don't pick the results you understand, and she'd the axioms that don't make sense to you. You can do it, but you are going to run into contradictions.
Buddhism is highly internally consistent despite the story being so old and informal in the sense of western philosophies. The danger of what she is trying to do here is that after you shed all the "myths", what you are going to end up with is mindful exercises for corporate events.
I still don't understand why one needs to know the teachings of Buddhism to understand the biographical details of Siddhattha Gotama. What sort of contradictions could arise?
The article does not discuss any kind of mindfulness exercises at all, or any other kind of meditation practice.
Becoming an orthodox Buddhist even feels like it would be counterproductive if one's purpose is to investigate what is mythical about Buddhism.
In any case, what is being discussed here is the historical person known as the Buddha, not the experience of being raised as an orthodox Buddhist.