Originally Posted by
Ash
But consciousness is a mystery. That there is ultimately a scientific meaning to it doesn't stop it being mysterious or highly significant. And is it certainly biochemical? I have argued with someone who insists that we cannot rule out a sophisticated electronic intelligence acquiring consciousness.
And if you think, as you indicated earlier, that a belief in god is a perfectly natural response to seeking patterns of order in a chaotic universe, it isn't unreasonable that the process of consciousness reflecting upon itself (meta-consciousness) would be part of that belief, based in the feeling of detachment from the material body that such reflection can cause. I suspect that this sense of detachment may have been the 'spirituality' that Monty was alluding to in his clumsily-constructed post.