The original question, 'Can machines think?' I believe to be too meaningless to deserve discussion.

I believe that at the end of the century the use of words and general educated opinion will have altered so much that one will be able to speak of machines thinking without expecting to be contradicted.

Mathematical reasoning may be regarded.

A computer would deserve to be called intelligent if it could deceive a human into believing that it was human.

Programming is a skill best acquired by practice and example rather than from books.

We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done.

I am not very impressed with theological arguments whatever they may be used to support. Such arguments have often been found unsatisfactory in the past. In the time of Galileo it was argued that the texts, 'And the sun stood still... and hasted not to go down about a whole day' (Joshua x. 13) and 'He laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not move at any time' (Psalm cv. 5) were an adequate refutation of the Copernican theory.