Any intelligent non-stupid-scum and non-conspiracy-theorists to explain?

I wouldn't put so much thought into it. I think Malick filmed a bunch of *beep*, then tried to shape a story around it, and hoped people would like it. Did you like it? If you did, then great.

Take it for what it is: a bunch of nonsensical portraits of a life with no bearing in a coherent narrative, thus life. The character we follow is just a a screenwriter in L.A., not a war general sent on a path of glory. So, no story to be had..............?

If you want to see some good movies about screenwriting, I suggest: Barton Fink and Adaptation.

My latest short film:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8674fFiF8ps

I haven't watched this film yet (it's in my queue), but I've noticed in 'Tree of Life' and 'To The Wonder' a lot of themes from the existential philosopher Soren Kierkegaard. Now it's been several years since taking philosophy but here's what I remember. In his works, he noted 3 main spheres of existence--the aesthetic, ethical, and religious. In the aesthetic sphere, the person is only concerned with himself, living in pure immediacy and self gratification. The example SK gives is Don Juan. The ethical sphere is a movement towards devotion to something else external. His best example was marriage. The religious sphere is where man acknowledges his guilt before God, and takes a "leap of faith" to devote himself fully to God.

If I had to guess from the trailer, this film deals with Christian Bale's character moving from the aesthetic sphere to the religious.

He's not mocking the tarot and I don't think he's pushing Christianity either (although he is apparently an Episcopalean). In fact To The Wonder is partially about the crisis of Christian faith.

He's revealing a deeper order through his films that has nothing to do with any mainstream religion - he just occasionally puts a conventional religious lens over it (for example visiting the Zen guy in Knight of Cups).

The fact that he based an entire movie around the Tarot, and showed that he understands the deeper symbolism, strongly supports this interpretation. His movies are increasingly esoteric. If anything they express themes that unite all religions.

I think he takes some liberties where he finds something poetic in religion. For example the opening text on Tree of Life is not a verbatim quote from the bible, he stitched together two bits of text from one chapter to make a more evocative phrase that I think is meant to evoke the sheer scale and grandeur of the force of creation that birthed the universe.

That wavery flickering thing that appears throughout Tree of Life is his 'God', something almost incomprehensible to the human mind, alone in the void, not in the least bit anthropomorphic, mysterious as it shifts shapes and colours.