Thanks very much for taking the time to make such a considered response.

I don’t think I said, or certainly didn’t mean to suggest, that my explanation is obviously superior to yours. I only remember saying that we were ‘obviously’ going to disagree, which we are.

Your comments here might lead us into a long discussion of definitions and their finer points, which is probably not worthwhile, since neither of us is likely to change our views. So I’ll focus on a couple of points.

You say that “ there’s no one home directing the natural constructions” in the universe. I assume that this applies therefore to everything in the universe; everything, no matter how apparently intelligent, is the consequence of an underlying unintelligent cause. How this state of affairs came about would obviously require an explanation. Philosophers and scientists have been struggling for some time to do so, even when they claim they have succeeded.

I would ask how such a universe is capable of creating beings where there clearly is someone at home, i.e. humans. I know that you probably think that I’m mistaken there, and that there is no one at home in a human, as I take you to be saying that humans are comparable to zombies, since they have been ‘created’ as part of a universe where there’s no one at home. (I’m also thinking of some statements from your article on death.) But I would ask, how can a being where there’s no one at home have the desire, and the skill to create something as magnificent as Bach’s fugues and Beethoven’s 9th symphony? Since you think that we are essentially just brains, how can a lump of matter have the desire to do that? Or, how can a lump of matter have any desires at all? How did they come into being?

You say that an eternal and uncreated divine mind is an ‘incoherent notion’. I take you to mean that this idea seems logically impossible to a rational philosopher. As all the great mystics say, however, the mind is the obstacle, a stumbling block, which prevents a true perception of ultimate reality — something beyond our comprehension might nevertheless be true. In any case, I would suggest that it is at least as coherent as what you are saying here.