Actually, the brickies' intention is in the middle of the chain. It starts with someone saying "I need/want a wall there.". The causal chain of a wall includes both material and mental elements. The causal chain of a thunderstorm has atmospheric elements, but no conscious or mental ones, as the causal chain of an earthquake is purely physical and energetic. But a birds' nest requires both mental and material elements, because the bird posesses a degree of consciousness.

Consciousess or thought may be a 'Fifth Force', or it may be elctromagnetic in nature. Or it could be some kind of quantum flux. We know what it does, not what it is. Same is true of a lot of things.

Truth is there are more important matters to hand. Hungry kids, for instance.

Now the physical world has colours and scents and sounds. They would have them even if we were not hear to observe them, in the sense that objects would reflect certain frequencies of light, volatile substances would still produce airborne chemicals and air molecules would still vibrate in response to movement, etc. What conscious beings perceive, however, is not the full nature of what is there, but only those parts of it that matter to them. Because of our developed self-consciousness and imagination, humans do more. We build a kind of structure, a palimpsest as it were, upon these basic phenomena. We try to see patterns, we follow chains of cause and effect. Unfortunately, we have tendency to go beyond the immediate, assigning causes which we do not know, empirically, to be true.

You argue that consciousness was there first and the rest follows on as a creation or flowering of consciousness. But archaeology, paleontology and geology provide concrete empirical evidence that the Unverse existed prior to our consciousness. So you respond that it all arises from Gods' consciousness, but fail to produce any concrete or empirical evidence of God.

You see my problem. You talk about rational beliefs and logic. But these are both human constructs that can be used to 'prove' anything, like the old joke that starts "I can prove you're not here." You can construct wonderful arguments and proofs for all kinds of things, but lacking physical evidence they remain thought experiments or examples of elegant argument withut practical application.

On the other hand, I can see or touch rock samples, core samples, fossils, archaeological artefacts. The results of decades, indeed centuries of painstakimg work by people who made no assumptions, but simply set off to find out what was there. What can you show me as concrete and convincing as that?

'Rational beliefs' is an oxymoron. Belief by its nature is irrational. I don't believe in things. I know some things, some ideas I accept on the basis of current evidence but am willing to set them aside in the face of better evidence should it be forthcoming. Other things I may speculate about, with the caveat that I may be completely off-track.