I hear that quote “Our minds may be the way the universe comes to understand itself” all the time, but it is such an absurd statement to me.  If the universe did not ALREADY understand itself, it would not have the capacity to be able to design Minds capable of understanding it.  The knowledge has to come first.  The tendency of so many people today to reject Theism while simultaneously anthropomorphizing non-sentient matter/energy (a.k.a., the “universe”) is truly bizarre to me.  The idea that a rational mind is the source of the information that is the foundation of reality makes far more sense than a stupid collection of matter/energy somehow blindly and accidentally developing conscious minds to then “figure itself out.”   If INFORMATION is the foundation of the universe, that INFORMATION itself had to already exist, which raises the obvious question from where did the information necessary to build the universe and ultimately to build human minds come from?  Especially if the universe itself didn’t already understand itself in the first place, the origin of the information needed to build human minds is left unexplained.  But if the information already existed then the idea that the universe didn’t already understand itself fully is contradictory.  And so the whole idea that we exist to help the universe understand itself is just silly on multiple levels.