“There is something of the pantomime to recent debates concerning science and religion, the question of their compatibility answered with alternating choruses of “Oh no they aren’t” and “Oh yes they are”. One would hope, therefore, that the entry, stage left, of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Marilynne Robinson might raise the level of the dialogue. But although the arguments in Absence of Mind are eloquent and beguiling, what might look like subtlety is too often plain sloppiness.”