[Epiphany21]

Your view of computers seems overly simplistic. The "adding machine" is just one component in a larger series of abstractions that enable functionality the adding machine is normally too inflexible to perform.

This is because math is a man-made thinking tool, similar to language. It works because we all agree to follow the rules of it, not because those rules are set in stone. The universe operates on its own time, by its own rules. Our constructs are also bound by those rules. You are alive because your entirety is worth more than the sum of your parts, and computers operate on a similar principle. When you shove a wooden board under a rock to pry it loose from the soil, you're leveraging the same forces that allowed you to even wake up that morning, and so does your computer when you jiggle the mouse to wake it.

In my opinion the miracle of consciousness is not the material it gets scribbled onto, but instead the fact it can exist at all.