Yeah absolutely, I have no objections to you looking at my thought experiments and saying "No, if you replaced every neuron with silicon I would stop being conscious". That's a totally valid conclusion and is a mainstream philosophical position. That's why they're thought experiments.

My issue was more just that people see the concept of a thinking machine and immediately reject it because it sounds silly, without thinking about it.

It has been claimed in the past that computers would never think "because they are made of matter"

It was a serious statement at the time it was made, but it is clearly ludicrous. Like the universe created special states for arranging energy in just to make the human brain from.