There is a vast literature on this. Basically the world is divided into two, those who agree with you and me regardinh consciousness, pioneered by Descartes, and those who don't, the real "hard materialists". I truly believe that intelligent people who do not believe as we do are simply not conscious. I wrote essays about this but they are always removed - here is a cached web-entry listing my article but it is cached because it disappeared as do all references to my idea, probably because it is a potentially problematic assertion about the "humanity" of those who deny awareness, eg perhaps they don't "feel" pain as we do.. etc.
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:dlHkaNxOpmAJ:www.statemaster.com/encyclopedia/Consciousness+&cd=8&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us See the last sentence of the section "Phenomenal and access consciousness" , a ref to me: " The possibility has indeed been proposed that those denying the existence of qualia, hence denying the existence of a "hard problem," do so since they do not possess this faculty[13]." see ref 13, but that link is broken. There used to be various sites quoting me, but I don't see any more left. See this instead.
The next level up is 'free will', which is what makes it possible for a conscious being to not just be a passive observer, a conscious robot vs the materialists who are non-conscious robots. A free willed being can affect the chain of cause and effect in an 'independent' manner. But this idea is completely counter to logic and physics and is impossible to actually define, and so is generally rejected by philosophers and scientists. Also, as opposed to consciousness which someone who is conscious knows exists by definition, free will CAN be an illusion, we CANNOT say for free will (as we do for consciousness)"I know it exists without having to prove it exists".
Religion is based on free will, since true morality is based on it, but there are religions (Calvinism?) which perhaps avoid this, and in any case philosophers are not interested in "true morality" but rather in showing that a brain state can exist which correlates to the thought "I am morally responsible for my action" even in a completely deterministic universe without awareness and without free will.
For my writings on this subject see:
read what Whitehead said and many many other philosophers wrote, and recently Nagel (
www.newyorker.com › books › page-turner › thomas-nagel-thoughts...
Jul 16, 2013 - The widest implications of Thomas Nagel's new book involve art and ... waves that give rise to a person's momentary complex of awareness, ...
www.prospectmagazine.co.uk › arts-and-books › thomas-nagel-mind-...
Oct 23, 2012 - The philosopher Thomas Nagel thinks the materialist scientific ... why the mind feels free, or why we feel we are self-aware and conscious.)
I used to try to reconcile religion and physics, thinking that physics had all the answers and religion had to fit inside physics somehow, but I stopped when I realized that physics did not at all enfranchise awareness (contrary to the new age claims that it does), and that most theoretical physicists were entirely uninterested in the topic, and so I came to the opposite conclusion, that physics was inadequate to the task of describing reality, and one need not be overly concerned with "reconciling" it with religion.. ..
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Science and the Modern World by Alfred North Whitehead (1925):
“Western peoples exhibit on a colossal scale a peculiarity which is supposed to be more especially characteristic of the Chinese. Surprise is often expressed that a Chinaman can be of two religions, a Confucian for some occasions and a Buddhist for other occasions . . . . But there can be no doubt that an analogous thought is true of the West, and that the two attitudes involved are inconsistent. A scientific realism, based on mechanism, is conjoined with an unwavering belief in the world of men and of the higher animals as being composed of self-determining organisms. This radical inconsistency at the basis of modern thought accounts for much that is half-hearted and wavering in our civilization…It enfeebles [thought], by reason of the inconsistency lurking in the backgroundIt enfeebles purpose itself, and consequently policy which necessarily presupposes purpose. …For instance, the enterprises produced by the individualistic energy of the European peoples presuppose physical actions directed to final causes. But the science which is employed in their development is based on a philosophy which asserts that physical causation is supreme, and which disjoins the physical cause from the final end. It is not popular to dwell on the absolute contradiction here involved.
Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World, p.73 (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1925).
p.91: p180-190