Of course I think exoteric religions are irrational and less rational than philosophical, atheistic naturalism. So like any philosopher I emphasize reason. But it depends on the context. I criticize both religions and secular culture, both liberalism and conservatism, both masculinity and femininity, and so on. If I'm talking about naïve religions, I'll apply reason as far as it will go because that's the right tool for the job. But If I'm talking about new atheism or secular culture, I'll point out that reason has its limits. See, for example, the articles below about theories of everything, mass hallucination, and how we're saturated with fictions.
Yeah, I think the Eucharist is stale and lame. All Catholic rituals are lame because they're ripped off of pagan cultures. The Eucharist comes from Mithraism. It would be hard for me to care much about an inauthentic experience, so I'd compare Catholicism to the broadest, lamest comedy, such as Jay Leno's when he hosted his show. The more history you know, the more fraudulent Catholicism seems. Stale (as Bishop John Shelby Spong pointed out) and lame.
Of course, there are plenty of lame modern, secular myths and practices too. All exoteric myths and rituals are lame because they cater to the lowest common denominator. Self-help articles on Medium, for example, are lame. That fraud isn't even intriguing.
Regarding transhumanism, I'm not saying I advocate racing to use the latest life-enhancing or extending technologies. I'm just trying to keep big picture history in view. I'm more interested in probabilities here than in whether a major historical trend is good or bad, because there's little we can do to affect those trends. Either we'll destroy ourselves or we're heading to some godlike, galactic empire, or perhaps we'll go out with a whimper rather than a bang. The sci-fi transhuman scenario is just a plausible possibility (extrapolating from the recent acceleration of technological progress), and I use that as a thought experiment to cash out the idea of secular enlightenment.
But am I in favour of a transhuman galactic empire? Yeah, it would be pretty cool, and it would vindicate our present struggles and muddles. This would make for a secular faith, of course, but it's nowhere near as farfetched or confused as theistic religions.
Saying that God created the universe is equivalent to saying that the universe sprang from nothing. As soon as you turn God into a thing, you make God contingent so he's no longer the first cause. Hence negative theology: we can say what God isn't but not what he is, so God's as good as nothing.
