Did you catch my other article last week on Bard's Lacanian take on the Axial Age? I have another article coming out next week on another chapter from that book.
I think you get to the essence of it when you say Bard's account is "muddled." At first I was intrigued by this talk of a pantheistic, realistic late-modern religion, but I feared that because his philosophical tradition is European, it would end up being bombastic and obfuscatory. When I started reading his recent books, my fears were confirmed. Notice, for instance, the revealing lack of quotations in his books, despite his claims that all kinds of writers agree with him (or that his views agree with theirs).
On top of that, there's his bullying tone, which is appalling and counterproductive.
You can find some interesting interpretations here and there in his books, but I wouldn't trust his scholarship on any subject, and that includes Hegel, Lacan, Nietzsche, and so on.
