Wanting to understand anything is a natural part of being human. It is a need like hunger or sex. As children we have great curiosity and need to ask and imitate and learn, which is the means of our survival. I am not questioning that. It can however become addictive...which is another matter.

My point here is different. Never mind soul, spirit, etc. That is a different discussion.

I am only saying that ....if all your Occam's razor and stuff lead to such conclusions as you seem to have arrived at (the self is an emergent property of the car)...then there is something dramatically wrong with the whole system of thinking and analysis.

From the car analogy it is very clear that humans are entirely responsible for the development of cars and also for the functioning of driver less cars. There is really no 'driverless' car. It is driven indirectly through sensors, GPS..whatever, that humans have created. The mechanism of control may be direct or indirect..which is not relevant here.

The point is that. Cars do have a real living thinking Self. It is the human being! Period! There cannot be any doubts or arguments about that.

In spite of this obvious factual situation, you manage to derive from this scenario something like a 'virtual self' and the 'self being the emergent property of the car' and so on and so forth. This raises many doubts about this kind of 'scientific thinking' and its roots in reality. It is a clear instance where 'science' misleads the thinker into perverse concepts that are obviously not real.

This is what I am talking about.

How much of such perverse thinking is prevalent in theories of evolution and other areas, is frightening to imagine.

Taking pot shots at religious concepts does not solve this problem btw.