If beauty doesn't require God, why should morality? (Bite me Dr. Craig.)

[bennyboy]

What I don't understand is why you think organic chemistry cannot account for consciousness just as well as it does for digestion. What we know about consciousness directly can never be falsified because we are that. But I see no reason consciousness cannot have a perfectly natural place in the world. In the same way, humanity is special to us because we are that, even though humanity is one of many mammalian species that has evolved right along with every other creature in existence .. quite naturally.

Organic chemistry can account for consciousness in the same way that the properties of various metals can account for the strenght of steel. We know that where there's a brain with certain functions, we have a person who seems to be conscious (and accept with a near-total confidence that the person isn't a philosophical zombie or something).

But digestion and cosciousness are different in an important way. There's nothing about digestion (so far as anyone has suggested) that cannot be studied PURELY in terms of the chemistry and mechanics of that system. Consciousness cannot be studied in this way-- you cannot observe a brain and know exactly what it is like for someone to experience their environment or ideas.