That AI can create concsiousness is a myth. It's unfortunate that we have so many movies that portrait robots developping AI to the point of conciousness, from an educative standpoint. I think in the scientific community it's pretty accepted by most that AI cannot create conciousness. I don't know of Right-out proof that could convince you besides that as an ex-programmer, I do know that there is no command for making a computer experience, and that no amount of complex code can get to that point. It's the same thing on the hardware level. If I make a robot and kick it in the can, I can put sensors and it can detect the hits as well as the impact, but it will never 'experience' or feel the hits, and no hardware besides life already existant can do that (well, at least us).

I don't think evolution and computer programming are so similar, but again, Action-reaction evolution as assumed by the Theory of evolution IS.

"Third, "you know" your consciousness is not causal in origin?  How did you come by this knowledge?  More feelings?"

This is about non-feeling/non-experience vs feeling/experience, and not just 'more'.  I'll just give an example with bugs since they appear mechanical, but they may have a degree of conciousness, dunno. Hit a bug, and it probably doesn't feel pain, however it will detect the hit and impact, and will react to it. It doesn't need conciousness to do that, because we could build a robot without complex AI to do the same thing.

In this case(the robot at least) it's causal. But when you get hit, your body doesn't just detect it, does it? It actually relays it to your conciousness, the part that feels its sense of self, and you 'feel' pain(depending on your perception. Some people can feel other things depending on their perception, such as pleasure).

Going back to the sense of self. Do you feel like you're still you right now? The same self experiencing? Why are you still there? Why aren't you just processes that combine with your body to focus on survival? It becomes very abstract at this point, and that's where I was saying it's subjective, right? Because after understanding what causal can and can't do, you have to be able to understand your own conciousness and check with your own free will, to try and understand if it can be purely causal. And of course the human mind is weird, so I'm not gonna make myself think that it's 100% impossible for my conciousness to be causal, but from what I can tell, it seems very very unlikely that what I've studied about my own experiences and feelings can be causal, and so I bring a very strong inclination that it's not causal, and that the Theory of evolution cannot explain it.

Perhaps one day scientists will prove that inclination wrong, but there has been no valid theories as to the development of conciousness through evolution as of yet. Of course some have some ideas, but it always fails to be detailed and convincing at the same time, and usually doesn't try to go out from causal explanations. There are theories outside of causal from time to time by some scientists, but they usually get rejected pretty quickly, (It's pretty taboo to reject Darwin's Theory of evolution in academic science) I think I remember seeing one called quantum evolution... but I don't think it was that great anyway...

At the very least, since they haven't well covered that area, that area should stay a gray area and I think it's a shame that most claim that the Theory evolution accounts for it when it doesn't. We don't know or understand it yet, just like we don't understand quantum physics yet.

The theory of evolution is seen as 'complete' by most, when it's not, and that's what I don't like. There is always room for error, and for other factors, yet it's not seen that way by most, including many academic scientists.

Edit: I thought I might add, that quantum physics and randomness is, in a sense, taken into account for natural selection.. but as an action. Like Genetic drift, it's considered random; It's associated to possibilities of variances in the genes, but, beyond that, the 'random' element is not factored as something non-causal that could be influencing (or perhaps even guiding) or maybe even adding undetectable effects, since the effects are uncalculable, unpredictable, and we don't even understand the source.

We mustn't confuse Randomness with chance. Because chance just means there's a possibility that something can happen, but it's still calculable, whereas randomness is not calculable, and so there's no way to know what that randomness is. There is inherent randomness in quantum physics and since it's not understood or calculable, it's not just an element of chance that can be taken into account as just an undetermined action, because in theory, if it's not constant then it could be influence by any number of things, in other words, we don't know the extent of kinds of variances or effects that can pop up or if it's guided by something else or isnt; It's not simply action-reaction.

I've addressed specific points, but the final two paragraphs may contain a shortcut for you depending on how you want to go from here. 

1.  Even the strongest critics of AI agree that the human brain can theoretically be simulated on a computer.  Wouldn't the downloaded brain, if operative, still be conscious?  If so, why can't a similar computer have an original program that is also conscious? 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_artificial_intelligence#The_brain_can_be_simulated

2.  No, I think that's a misconception you have.  Or, in other words, "That's faulty logic unless you intend to show that computer programming and THE THEORY OF evolution are SO similar that they must logically share that trait (whether consciousness is possible or not)."

3.  It appears that you have now answered my earlier question, and said that your evidence that you have free will (and consciousness) is the fact that you have feelings.  I cannot say how strongly I disagree with this analysis.  How does having feelings guarantee free will at all? 

4.  "There are theories outside of causal from time to time by some scientists, but they usually get rejected pretty quickly, (It's pretty taboo to reject Darwin's Theory of evolution in academic science)"  People don't simply get shouted down in published scientific papers; unpopular or radical theories may see stronger (even extreme) criticism, but if the theory was correct it should have held up, right? 

Basically, though, your main point seems to be "I thought about the theory of evolution, and my gut feeling was that it's wrong about causality creating my mind, so that's why I think it's wrong.  I don't accept that the evidence I'm mistaken constitutes proof." 

That's pretty much just a statement of opinion, so there's not much to discuss IMO without a huge discussion of the "evidence you're mistaken", which would take forever and still never convince a sufficiently determined doubter. 

"if the nervous system obeys the laws of physics and chemistry, ... we ... ought to be able to reproduce the behavior of the nervous system with some physical device "

taken from the wikipedia articcle you linked. the key is the 'if'.  But I'd add, if it obeys "only known" laws of physics and chemistry. and the other key word is 'ought'. They don't know, and we don't know. Yes I'll admit that I can't prove that is isn't only that, but nobody can as of now prove that it is.. they just say 'ought' and it's basically an opinion, much like you pointed that mine is. But isn't the Theory of Evolution considered factual and complete by a lot of people? And that's a point I'm trying to make, is that the Theory of Evolution doesn't have all the answers; you have to make a lot of assumptions for it to stay standing.

1. They talk about simulating the humain brain and intelligence, but don't really talk that much about conciousness and experience.

 this statement " in principle, anything can be simulated by a computer "  Is very extreme to say the least. I talked a bit about randomness earlier... It's impossible to simulate randomness on a computer, which is at the base of physics in matter and energy (quantum physics). Do you know how randomness is simulated on computers? - You retrieve the numbers from the current time ( usually miliseconds ) at the moment the process is put in effect, with additions such as a few calculable formulas just to add some flavor. The logic is that the process gets put in effect at times where you don't know what the miliseconds are, because it changes so fast, that you'll fall on decently varied numbers... but it's not true randomness.

 There are plenty of critics, but it's not spoken highly in the scientific community, because, again, it's a touchy subject and there are lots of politics involved.which leads to..

4. "but if the theory was correct it should have held up, right?" Yes it should, but unfortunetly that's not always the case. I really hated that Ben Stein movie, and it's unfortunate that he screwed up so much the message of an actual problem in the scientific community, because there are a lot of politics and odd things going on ( If you think that's not the case, there's lot's of evidence for what I'm saying.. just not in main stream news.)

3. It doesn't guarantee free will at all. Feelings are part of the experience. Free will is the capability of making un-predetermined decisions.

2. Intelligence is intelligence, so I think you can indeed simulate it with computers. Conciousness, free will, and experience aren't part of intelligence. I have in mind a program that I could program intelligently, but how can I show you that it doesn't experience? How can I show you that it'll never feel? I can't... and in that sense it's an opinion, just like anyone who says that AI at some point can experience, and can feel. So I'm sorry, but this is indeed a dead end if you want more proof. I'd just like people to understand that there is also no proof for computer AI being able to experience and feel.  Why? Because we can only experience and feel through our own conciousness. In this sense it's not faulty logic... but I think I did make it sound like it was certain that AI can't produce those, which is why I can only stick with my strong inclination based on subjective evidence (yes, feelings and experience, and the deeper unexplainable understanding of these).

"Basically, though, your main point seems to be "I thought about the theory of evolution, and my gut feeling was that it's wrong about causality creating my mind, so that's why I think it's wrong.  I don't accept that the evidence I'm mistaken constitutes proof." 

That's pretty much just a statement of opinion, so there's not much to discuss IMO without a huge discussion of the "evidence you're mistaken", which would take forever and still never convince a sufficiently determined doubter."

-It's more than a gut feeling, but I wouldn't call it subjective 'truth', more like subjective 'theory' since there is subjective evidence that does allow me to say that it's more than just a gut feeling or an opinion. Usually though, you can treat subjective truths like an opinion, so same goes for subjective theories, though I always find it interesting to discuss about, just like it's interesting to exchange opinions. In this case though, I'd like to think that all humans have this subjective evidence, but I think realizing/understanding may be complicated.. eeh
But, what evidence that I'm mistaken? I haven't seen any, I'd like to ask what you mean.

if you don't feel like talking about it or you think there's evidence but aren't expert about it then yeah, we don't have to talk about it.

The logic is not valid, so the conclusion you reached can be false even though both premises are true.  The statement would be valid if you said:

Midnight sees like a cat.

Cats see in the dark.

Midnight can see in the dark.

But for your comparison to hold up (theory of evolution is like programming, consciousness can't be programmed so neither can evolutionary theory account for consciousness) it is assumed that the programmer has perfect knowledge of physical and chemical laws, etc., so the objection of unknown or incomplete laws doesn't hold up.  This is because the point of talking about AI in this discussion is the comparison to evolution according to current theory.  Evolution is happening by itself, without an actual programmer (let's not get onto the God/ID side of things right now...), so the objection of lack of knowledge or skill on the part of the programmer is completely irrelevant, I think. 

For talking about randomness, firstly, are you now saying that you suspect that free will is dependent on randomness?  Secondly, again, that is a limitation of programming (at least as far as we know) that you just said does not apply to biological evolution. 

... oh wait, never mind, now you're saying that consciousness might be programmable but we'll never know.  But doesn't this mean you're abandoning the analogical disproof of the adequacy of evolutionary theory? 

3.  So now you're back to asserting that you have free will without evidence other than, possibly, your feeling that you have it. 

-If everybody has access to this evidence, then you ought to be able to explain it. 

FInally, on evidence you're mistaken, I was referring to where you said things like "Of course some have some ideas, but it always fails to be detailed and convincing at the same time, and usually doesn't try to go out from causal explanations."  To me, this meant that people had submitted explanations and evidence that you found insufficiently compelling, without outright believing they were wrong in the evidence.  So if there's a bunch of evidence that would tend to point in the opposite direction from your position, but you don't feel that there's enough to justify saying you're definitely wrong, then that would be 'evidence you're mistaken that doesn't constitute proof' in your estimation.