I find it useful to distinguish between exoteric and esoteric religion. The latter promotes philosophical enlightenment, the former not so much. I'd apply your cynical take on religion to the exoteric kind, to the literalistic charades for those who are only superficially spiritual and who indeed make excuses for their secular compromises.

There are, however, "fundamentalists" and genuine spiritualists, such as the ascetics who renounce secular pastimes altogether.

A question that interests me is whether there's a common form of enlightenment or higher mentality that anticipates a transhuman one, a perspective based on peak states of consciousness that transcend the philosophy-religion dichotomy.

Both theocratic and capitalistic societies may be run by frauds and ideologies in the cynical, Marxian sense, but there's also an objective view from nowhere that encompasses that cynicism and that might provide some nobler alternatives. Or perhaps enlightened individuals are only the cynics sitting at the back of the class making parasitic jokes. I suppose I'm talking about the prospects of a late-modern bodhisattva.