That’s true. Also true that the sign of an only marginally more advanced orientation is a conceptually under-articulated dissatisfaction. The issue of OP lies in subjecting phenomena to an external criteria of religiosity, which falsifies the intended insight about religiosity

Analyzing what is popular is not inherently defective given the double obligation to theorize the phenomenon per se and its popularity at once. There is a compression that incentivizes cutting corners, since the phenomenon in some sense just is the popularity

but that’s an empty transcendental form (at best), which is taken a priori, whereas the (simple) truth is that the syntheticity of the dream is accomplished in the interpretation that occurs upon waking. The dissatisfaction is due to the awareness that we are not not in the dream

simply because we decided to intentionally reflect on what is popular. One must make some decisions, accept some theoretical sacrifices, to make an incision, which means constructing an audience distinct from the phenomenon, so to return to the object causing desire in the real

Or, to re-discover the object as if we were ignorant not only of why the thing is popular but why there is even interest in its popularity. This is the perspective of any historian, who however have the privilege of the de facto narrativity accruing to that which is not.

It makes sense to simply give up except for that fact that the human system makes a claim on every judgment and every suspension of judgement, as proved by the compulsion to irony here and elsewhere.