Theism should not take much consolation in the problems which philosophy and neurology face in accounting for the simple fact of consciousness.
Prior to quantum theory, the creationist could take shelter in theism because the evolutionist had no chemical explanation of a sun of solar mass "burning fuel" for billions of years.
But it was chemistry itself that was to receive a new foundation which would permit a nuclear theory of stellar 'evolution'. Neither the subsequent discovery of quasars or black holes or the hypothesizing of dark mater or dark energy have placed this stellar model in question. Quite the opposite is the case.
The solar story is not trivial : the time for a photon to reach the surface of the Sun from a fusion event in the core of the Sun is astonishing ... as astonishing as the roughly nine minutes to reach the Earth.
With the Hubble use of Cepheid variable stars as a standard, the size of the visible universe became truly astonishing.
We can expect to be just as astonished by an account of the emergence or appearance of "what it is like to be a young crow observing an older crow accomplishing a task" in a universe that at one time did not have the form bird or the substance of individual birds let alone problem-solving birds or the observing of those performances.
The issue is not materialism or mechanism. The double-slit experiment involves no clear commitment to either, but the theories proposed do reveal some surprising mathematical affinities and some very high confirmation of experimental predictions.
Chemistry has no option to return to pre-quanta days and philosophy has no prospect of returning to the "rational soul" of Aristotle or Aquinas — nor is there any hope of animal souls being material while human souls are "rational". That ship has sailed off the end of a flat earth.
See: Thomas Nagel: Mind and Cosmos
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