DNA Proves Existence of a Designer

[Angrboda]

I know basically nothing about paramecium, so I can't speak intelligently to that subject.  For my part, I am persuaded that consciousness is an aspect of a material process, though I freely admit the evidence is not conclusive.  It's entirely possible that we are simply fooling ourselves due to biases and paradigms which we have largely inherited.  However, on the other side of the coin, the evidence for competing hypotheses as to the nature of consciousness is extremely poor, and in many cases outright laughable.  That doesn't in and of itself mean the hypotheses are wrong, but failing they step up their game, there is little 'reason' to take them seriously.  It's a very deep subject which most people are content to merely skim the surface regarding, and only just long enough to find justification to believe a view they already had.

I find the subject matter fascinating, and have hopes of it potentially solving some of the mysteries of our existence.
 
   The material process that they speculated about initially, and spent billions and billions of dollars of research money on, was one conducted by the AI people. They were comparing our brains to computers, and accordingly, many believed that copying the brain's neurons and synaptic connections would reproduce brain functions including consciousness. So they were committed to 'mapping the brain', cataloging each neuron's shape and connections with the artificial intelligence people promoting the idea that consciousness can exist in computers, and that we can 'upload' our minds into silicon when our biological bodies give out.
   So, to see if they were right,  AI researchers have simulated the entire, already-mapped nervous system (302 neurons) of the tiny worm C elegans. C elegans clearly exhibits some conscious behaviors, like. moving in response to stimuli etc. But the artificial C elegans simulated by the AI people just sits there, with no functional behavior at all. AI can't even simulate the easy problems in simple brains.
      I personally find it alarming that anyone would ever even develop such a ridiculous hypothesis in the first place, and then spend billions of dollars on it, but boys will be boys and I guess it's good they finally ruled that out as a possibility.
 So what does that leave us with? Well, you know what I think and I guess only time will tell.