I think the (very widely held) idea that consciousness is evidence that the world isn't purely material is founded on a mistake.
So the argument seems to go something like this. "Imagine a mind, or the nearest possible thing to a mind, made up entirely of material stuff. Can you see where its consciousness comes from? No? Why, then, clearly minds must be immaterial, or have immaterial components, or something of the sort."
But if you actually try to turn this into an argument that would convince someone who didn't already want to believe in immaterial minds/souls/spirits, you'll find that there's a huge gap in it. It purports to show that "minds are entirely material" (call this M) is less plausible than "minds are not entirely material" (not-M) by looking only at consequences of M and not comparing them with consequences of not-M.
If the argument had turned up an actual logical contradiction as a consequence of M, that would be fair enough: if M leads to contradiction then not-M must be better (unless M and not-M are both actually nonsense of some sort). But if M is merely improbable or counterintuitive or currently lacking good explanations, you can't compare M with not-M until you've also looked to see whether not-M has the same problems.
In this instance, it's quite true that it's hard to see how material stuff could give rise to the experience of consciousness. Fair enough. Is it any easier to see how immaterial stuff (or immaterial non-stuff) could do it? I don't think so. -- Other than by begging the question, the theist's favourite technique. You just say, e.g., that by definition souls give rise to consciousness, and then of course belief in souls "explains" consciousness. But of course this is simply cheating: there's no actual explanation there, nothing more than a bare baseless assertion. You could just as well say that by definition matter gives rise to consciousness when it's appropriately organized. Which would be daft, and materialists don't actually say that, but that's not a weakness of the materialists' position. (More often, the theist doesn't say in so many words "I define souls to be things that give rise to consciousness". They simply take that for granted, and no one notices because it's such a familiar move.)
The exact same sort of broken logical structure is found in typical theistic (or supernaturalist) arguments from free will and moral absolutes.
Fair enough. Is it any easier to see how immaterial stuff (or immaterial non-stuff) could do it? I don't think so. -- Other than by begging the question, the theist's favourite technique. You just say, e.g., that by definition souls give rise to consciousness
Or you can say that consc.is fundamental and does not arise from anything else. The physicalist takes some things (eg matter/energy)nas inexplicable fundamentals., The dualist takes one more thing as an inexplicable fundamental. I am not particualrly selling dualism, but it remains popular becaude it is not as obviously flawed as you make out.
Background
I was raised in the Churches of Christ and my family is all very serious about Christianity. About 3 years ago, I started to ask some hard questions, and the answers from other Christians were very unsatisfying. I used to believe that the Bible was, you know, inspired by a loving God, but its endorsement of genocide, the abuse of slaves, and the mistreatment of women and children really started to bother me.
I set out to study these issues as much as I could. I stayed up past midnight for weeks reading what Christians have to say, and this process triggered a real crisis of faith. What started out as a search for answers on Biblical genocide led me to places like commonsenseatheism.com. I learned that the Bible has serious credibility problems on lots of issues that no one ever told me about. Wow.
My Question
Now I'm pretty sure that the God of the Bible is man-made and Jesus of Nazareth was probably a failed prophet, but I don't have good reasons to reject the supernatural all together. I'm working through the sequences, but this process is slow. I will probably struggle with this question for months, maybe longer.
Excluding the Supernatural was interesting, but it left me wanting a more thorough explanation. Where do you think I should go from here? Should I just continue reading the sequences, and re-read them until the ideas gel? I'm coming from 30 years of Sunday School level thinking. It's not like I grew up with words like "epistemology" and "epiphenomenalism". If there is no supernatural, and I can be confident about that, I will need to re-evaluate a lot of things. My worldview is up for grabs.