The funny part being that they write it as if the ideas are preposterous. Putting religion at the very basis of the operation of the universe is one hell of a drug.
EDIT: Already made it a comment, but I feel it's important before people get that idea that these people are necessarily our enemies.
People write/read takes like this and come to radically different conclusions due to their different base axioms of human experience. For the target readership of catholicculture.org, they are ones that are trying to understand the universe, with the base assumption being the existence of a Christian god. Many an apologetic has attempted to synthesize the real observable world with a just, righteous god. Regardless of their flawed logics, they are at least interested in taking a holistic approach to the human experience rather than an individual, capitalist, exploitative experience. As someone who as a child dove into the catholic theological worldview, desperate for meaning in this clearly meaning deprived society, these people can be radicalized, and are capable of changing their basis of thought. It takes real effort and patience, but they are much more likely to be a devoted comrade to the human liberatory unification experience than a bourgeois hedonistic individualist, who only cares for themselves and the people closest to them, who would rather not ponder their experience let alone the collective human experience, but rather live their own lives in pursuit of illusory happiness in isolation.
The term "illusion". It's a loaded category. Nobody says "cars don't exist!" because they aren't ontonlogically timeless unitary objects that are air gapped from interaction with the rest of the universe.
The same with consciousness or the self. We experience it, it exists at some level, even if the nature of that existence in unsatisfying or counter intuitive.
To quote the great work of philosophical truth Star Trek IV. "Nothing unreal exists"
Yeah, illusion is a loaded term which I wielded recklessly lol.
Its certainly a real experience, and there's absolutely no taking away from an individuals "individual" experience and life in the world. The world is real, it is no illusion, or else real is a ridiculous designation in the first place. What I really mean to say is that I don't believe the traditional continuous self with free will exists. I believe our conscious seamless moment by moment experience, and our thoughts, aren't dictated by this higher self that we consider "us", rather its a patchwork experience with background processes synthesizing memory and stimulus to form ideas and thoughts, that for some presently unknown reason is evolutionarily advantageous, whether it be in problem solving or otherwise. Which isn't at all to reduce the miracle of our existence and our experience. We can both be a sum of parts that alone are mechanical and lifeless, as well as a living whole conscious being.