You wrote: "No place in the universe is more objectively sacred than any other. Without the naïve intuitions that personalize everything so that we can socialize with it, and thus without a compelling basis for theism, these judgments of holiness are misleading."

Are there really no sites more sacred than others? I wonder, which means I really don't know one way or another. However, there are many indigenous peoples who claim that certain places are sacred and holy, including mountains, lakes, and valleys. Sedona, AZ, has sacred mountains featuring various vortexes, and the Black Hills are considered the center of the world. Other areas are also imbued with this title.

But we come to the word "objectively." Are any of the sites objectively, provably, sacred or holy? It seems that anything that is called sacred or holy is done so by a mind that is conditioned to create and accept such concepts. On the other hand, scientists have visited a number of such places with their instrumentation to record higher levels of electromagnetism than other areas. Does this make them sacred? I don't know, but it is possible that these areas give human beings a special feeling in mind, emotions, and body.

Skipping forward in your article I come to another point. You mentioned the "immateriality of the inner life, which we treasure as our subjective essence..." and then you refer to this as consciousness. But consciousness is not our essence. What is not material is the emptiness out of which consciousness arises.

I don't know if I missed something or I'm not grasping what you are saying. You wrote that the "personal self is desecrated when it’s objectified, and this is the essence of the self’s death, when the person is revealed to have been an object all along, and the self some magic trick of the brain." Are you saying this is how others see it or how we are inculcated to see it? I don't see it this way. The self is always an object; it's an object of attention, as well as an accretion of thoughts and a physical body that is not are of itself or anyone else beyond the senses.

Lastly, you wrote "What makes us precious is..." It seems that what makes us precious is our own delusion that we are precious. And this delusion comes from our need to be self-important and alive.

I'm sorry if I missed your point here.