Why is Buddha almost treated like a God in most Buddhist traditions?

While I find some buddhist ideas intriguing - mainly using meditation to find insights in oneself - I'm also quite irritated, why so many traditions are so full of dogma, i.e. things you just have to believe or do. It's exactly this way of thinking which always bugged me with religions. Buddhism (at least in it's "westernized" form) seemed to be different: Don't believe in anything except the insights you got from your own meditation practice. At least I thought, that this was one of the core teachings of Buddha. So why is it, that most established traditions treat Buddha almost like a god, which you have to worship or errect statues for? Or put another way: Would he be happy if he would see what became of his teachings today, especially in regard to the personality cult? The only answer I could come up with is: People can't let go of gods. But isn't this foiling the main idea that the historical Gautama was teaching?