“I don’t necessarily see any difference between any of those things in a naturalistic construct.”
Really? No difference between conscious thought, conditioned responses, instincts, or some other part of our nature?
If that is true, then we are no different than animals. Yet, we can see that is not the case, because we possess attributes that animals cannot. So something must make us different, and that thing must not be possessed by creatures which are nearly biologically identical to us.
As humans we have a natural born yearning to seek out something greater beyond ourselves, something greater than we are.
We are the only creatures who go out and try to find something greater than ourselves, to try to transcend our existence. No other animal thinks that way. All animals wish to survive, true, but only humans wish to transcend. Only humans try to seek out and find God.
And if there's no God, that's absolutely right. We merely have a more developed system of conditioned responses based on purely physicalogical processes in the chemical reeations of our brains. This is absolutely what the behaviorists believe. This is what B.F. Skinner taught and he has a wide school of academics who follow this. They don't believe in a soul, just predetermined chemical reactions that always work the same way. The same thing we call instinct in an animal. Yet, I know there is a difference - a soul and spirit created in the image of God. That is what makes us human and God is who creates objective ethical norms which are as "real" or "true" as gravity itself.