However, when confronted by churchgoers who do not fit these categories, I am mystified. In this way: I wish to ask, is there a meta-system within the main system (designed for childish idiots, as described above)--do the intelligent members of the church do a lot of winking and nodding while the rest of the drooling zombies nod and agree with whatever the guy with the loudest megaphone is saying?
Honestly, I do think there is a certain amount of this. It's hard to say because I've only ever had one or two other people hint at maybe winking and nodding towards me. Nobody wants to get caught out as the only intelligent person in the room. I think the big thing is that the higher up you go in intelligence (by which, for clarification, I mean a kind of spiritual intelligence, which is completely different from academic intelligence,) the more you realize that the details kind of don't matter. But just like you have to wait until a kid is old enough before explaining certain realities of life, you can't openly admit to a more generalized "all roads lead to heaven" or "God is all of us plus science" kind of philosophy in front of other church members, because you don't have that convenient age/size thing to give you a clue about where they are on their path.
There are several Bible passages about how you shouldn't do anything that will weaken someone else, even if it's not something that's a problem for you. In practical terms, this would be like not drinking in front of an alcoholic, but in the original context it was talking about spiritual rituals.
Is it critical that the meat be blessed? No, but if it's important to the guy next to you, then it's better for him that you respect the context, especially since it shouldn't matter one way or the other to you.
I actually witnessed something like this in real time once: there was a pastor whom I respected and suspected was higher on the spiritual intelligence ladder than he let on. He was giving a sermon on not allowing yourself to be trapped by small symbols, and specifically used the example of a physical Bible. It was the word of God, yes, but it was also just paper and not The Word, because The Word was immutable and larger than one book, etc. As a demonstration he casually tossed his open Bible on the floor and allowed to it sit there, pages crumpled.
Long story short, some people were of course offended, the elders met with him, and the next week his sermon was an apology on how he was wrong--not wrong in his original assertion, but still wrong to do something that would be offensive and weakening to the faith of others. (Weakening because the less-spiritually-intelligent churchgoer might say, "This pastor is not Godly! I will leave this church. In fact, I should stop believing in God all together because pastors are all hypocrites...") So yeah, he was basically admitting that from now on in the pulpit he would be treating a physical thing with respect, but he would be winking and nodding at those of us who had understood his point from the previous week.
How can intelligent people stomach religion?
Right, so if it's all a big wink-and-nod from the top, what's the point? Well, for me there are a couple of reasons.
1.) Corporate (as in, group meetings, not just belief in your own head) religion is a survival trait. Studies have shown it. Doesn't matter whether it's Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Quaker--people who go to some kind of church live longer, are happier, recover from health issues more quickly. It doesn't really matter to me whether that's because of the support of a social network, or the health benefits of basic calm introspection, or some divine interventionary response to prayer, or because there are an infinite number of universes and our brains are actually capable of choosing which universe our consciousness ends up in through the power of intense positive thinking. Being and participating in this place is statistically going to be good for me and my family--especially my family, because who's to say if my children will turn out spiritually intelligent, or the kind of person who truly needs the moral structure of a church? We do our best to turn our children into little copies of ourselves, but it would suck if they got to adulthood and I hadn't given them something it turned out they desperately needed. The wrong church can be damaging, no doubt, and as with every parenting decision it's of course incumbent upon me to choose one that isn't. But the wrong school can be (has been) damaging to my kids; that doesn't mean they shouldn't go to school, it just means I have to find the right school.
2.) Church includes a
charitable imperative that secular institutions, try as they might, have not yet been able to replicate. They try, don't get me wrong. Non-church-goers (I won't even say atheists, because I know atheists who go to church) certainly donate to charity all the time, and there is nothing to say they can't be just as generous. But in my personal experience, I've never met a non-church-goer who gives a literal 10% of all their income to charity. By comparison, the number of churchgoers I know who give the full tithe are too many to count. Now, granted, part of that goes to running the church itself, and one has to choose carefully to avoid wasteful, lavish, or scamming churches, just as one has to choose carefully among other charities. But even running the church itself is useful for those at the bottom of the ladder who need that structure, so what's the difference between giving to MADD, versus keeping a church afloat when one or two of their attendees are only staying sober 'by the power of their Savior?'
One could argue that they don't necessarily agree with all the things the church is going to spend their money on, like anti-abortion policies or the like, but again that only comes down to choosing a church that fits your priorities. Our particular church mostly stays away from that kind of work, taking only separate donations for a local charity that provides baby stuff and maternity clothes to women who have already chosen to keep their unplanned babies. They instead focus on hands-on stuff; buying actual groceries for families who have lost their incomes, doing free repairs on the car of a single mom, going down to the site of the wildfires a couple summers ago and demolishing and clearing burnt structures for days at a time... I saw plenty of donation boxes around town at that time, "dump your old clothes in here for fire victims," which were nice and all, but let's be honest, they were minimal-effort kind of stuff. The people alongside me covered in soot were all from church organizations. And I myself would almost certainly not have been there, were it not for the information and organization disseminated by our church. I would have still felt bad for the victims, yes, maybe donated a few times at the grocery store when they asked if they could add $3 to my bill, but if I didn't go to church I would not have been out there laboring for two days. I wouldn't have even known where and when to show up, and I wouldn't have wanted to go all by myself. They got more goodness out of me, and more out of all their other members, than any secular institution ever has.
3.) My in-laws were missionaries, and at least nominal church attendance when they visit would be necessary to keep the peace anyway. So hey, free brownie points.