Thanks for your kind response. The evolution of consciousness is predected by the engineering discipline of real-time process control as part of the evolution of complexity. I don’t type fast enough to cover it here.
An important point is that evolution doesn’t change what is. It just offers a scientific explanation of how it got that way. Morals are still morals. Love is Love. Consciousness is still consciousness.
My point is that science cannot explain how “Good” got to be “good”. It can’t see it with the tools it has wisely limited itself to.
To science, purely scientifically, dead is no better than alive, pain no better than comfort, kindness no better than cruelty.
And to logic, or philosophy, values can only be conditional, “If/then”. Each better than relies on a previous premise - always conditional: IF life is better than death then..
To arrive an an unconditional value, requires, by the nature of the tools available, some knowledge beyond either science or logic.
This is the sphere of religion. And in this area, our absolute values, everyone has them, or acts as if they do. Even you; even Dawkins.
Evolution cannot explain consciousness. Sorry. I just don’t buy the idea that complex machines or computers will someday become “conscious.” And even if they did, how would we know? If they tell us they are conscious, how could we know they aren’t lying?
Come to think of it, how can you know that anyone other than yourself is actually conscious? You cannot determine that “scientifically.” That’s something that, when you get right down to it, you *must* take on faith. No way around it. That one reason that people like Dawkins who ridicule “faith” are just morons.
Of course there is complexity theory and chaos theory and life existing on the boundary of chaos, etc.. All of these are ways of inferring up from science. Interesting stuff.
But at some point, I know you'll admit, scientific theory reaches it's limit to explain consciousness. The eyeball looking at itself. And the same holds true of religion deducing science.
I have to leave soon, but I'd like to share a religious/scientific :) theory. It is inferential, therefore evidence but not proof. It goes like this:
Where matter is favored (in conditions in a particular place in the universal environment) life emerges. Where life is favored, intelligence emerges. Where intelligence is favored, consciousness emerges.
From the available evidence, this is the way the universe works.