Now you've put yourself into a trap. "Consciousness is emergent" but also "Consciousness is not emergent". Only one of these statements can be true. Life is that sand pile. We were a pile of chemicals that got hit by lightning or whatever billions of years ago, and from those uncountable chemical and electrical reactions nature evolved a programming machine that reliably produces conscious entities from non-conscious materials. Again, 4 billion year old sand pile.

Personally I reject the hard problem of consciousness. People keep having to try to invent magic, god, or unfound sciences for an issue that is simply complex but right in front of us.

I didn’t say consciousness is emergent? Given some fundamental mechanism and substrate which is the essence of consciousness sure there will be emergence on top, but I’m not sure how you’re getting me saying consciousness is emergent when I clearly expressed the opposite.

You can reject the hard problem, but that just amounts to giving up with pride.