I have done a lot of thinking and working out for myself, which is why I have come to the conclusion that we comprise of much more than a complex set of chemical reactions. I do not have all the answers - no one does. But I know that the answers are not derived from the lifeless atoms and molecules making up our physical body.
We should all be familiar by now with the idea that all life forms and made of lifeless atoms and molecules. To someone in the Middle Ages this would have been deeply counterintuitive. What we describe as life is something that happens at a different scale. We still struggle however with the concept that mind is matter. We are encultured into thinking of mind as an ontologically distinct thing from brain; it just seems such a fundamentally different domain of stuff.
When ancient Greeks first worked out that the Earth was not flat, but spherical, it must have tested their credulity; when we dismissed the geocentric universe and replaced it with our current planetary model it would have been seen as ridiculous; any idiot could look up and see that all the heavens orbitted around the Earth. Einstein gave us an understanding of spacetime that still runs deeply counter to our intuitions; how on earth could time be flowing at a different speed at my head to that at my feet ?
All our leaps forward in the past have required of us to abandon ancient intuitive ways of thinking and this is where we are at right now with understanding mind/body/consciousness; all the evidence strongly suggests that mind
is matter ultimately, and it is up to us in our age to rise to the challenge to dismiss our older intuitions and get our heads around this knowledge. It requires a paradigm shift in our thinking; bald denials of new insights will get reap us nothing but stagnation.
