What the God debate is really about

[Mudhammam]

If reality is entirely self-organizing, then you should agree that our own consciousness is not separate but that it is already embedded within the total, unified self-organizing system and therefore it is not confined to our brains only (nor any particular region of space, for that matter). Consciousness would not be something "emergent" in the universe, but rather inherent.

And if that is not so, then there has to be an external agent. But either way, you can't eliminate consciousness as being the initial/fundamental state of reality.

I posted plenty more thoughts on this topic in my Order vs. Randomness thread.

I would say that at bottom reality is self-organizing and this is evidenced by the continual discoveries in physics, chemistry, and biology.

Concerning consciousness though, I would say it's only inherent when you have the right organization of molecules, which of course you may or may not get through natural selection. So beyond that I wouldn't say it is inherent or fundamental to reality (a distinction should be made here between MY reality, or mankind's perception of physical reality--on which consciousness is fundamental--and truly "objective reality"--on which I think it is not).