@gbrooks9
Consciousness is certainly a mystery. Is it the greatest mystery? Maybe, maybe not. One would need exhaustive knowledge of all sciences to rank the mysteries that mankind has not yet solved.
As for God’s care, the Psalms indicate, as does Jesus, that God cares for all his creation, not just humanity. But even with that caveat, I think we would agree that humans are capable of relationship with God in a way that the rest of his creation is not. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth. The latter part of that formula implies a rational component to worship. That rational component certainly includes “facts” about God, but it shouldn’t be limited to that. It also (and maybe primarily) includes relational knowledge, e.g. truly knowing him through a relationship of love.
“Whatever a soul is or could be” … Ah, there’s the rub. If we can’t even say what a soul is, how can we divide it into parts? Is there an unaware part of the soul? Who knows? I would agree that consciousness, as well as the other aspects of the structural image of God (speech, reason, will, aesthetic sense, etc.), are what set humanity apart from the rest of the animal kingdom and make it possible for us to fulfill the functional aspects of the image of God (loving God, loving others, representing God on Earth). Without consciousness, we certainly could not function as God intended, in loving relationship with him and other people. In that sense, consciousness is a necessary precondition to worship in spirit and in truth. However, to go beyond that and say that consciousness = spirit/soul/heart is speculation. Not that there’s anything wrong with that …
My thoughts: Spirit is immaterial. God, as spirit, cannot be observed, weighed, located, etc. He is not detectable by our senses or measurable by our instruments. Likewise, the spiritual life breathed into man by God – the soul, if you will – is immaterial. The problem with identifying consciousness as the soul is the fact that we can measure, through brain waves, a person’s level of consciousness. Our instruments are capable of detecting the difference between one who is “brain dead,” comatose, asleep, or fully conscious. Granted, these are rudimentary distinctions, and they do not represent much of an advance in solving the mystery of consciousness, but the fact that a person’s level of consciousness can be measured through brain waves implies that the phenomenon has an underlying physical cause in the normal functioning of the brain. This would rule out consciousness as being equivalent to the spirit/soul, which is immaterial and, therefore, cannot be detected with physical instruments.
Again, if you try to identify the soul with consciousness, particularly if you do so dogmatically, you face a serious problem if later discoveries explain consciousness as a physical process. To paraphrase your earlier formula, with a physical explanation of consciousness, there is no soul.