or ‘how does experiencing arise in matter?’ We can understand how complex phenomena might arise out of simpler phenomena. But how does interiority arise? One of the assumptions, generally not defended but simply accepted apriori, is that experiencing (consciousness) is a byproduct of complexity (or some forms of it). But we have no proof or even the slightest evidence of this. Another way to couch the issue and to ask your question is 'Why did you decide that the default is not alive, not experiencing, not conscious? In the law we have a presumption of innocence (and of sanity, for that matter=? For most scientists there is a presumption of not being alive, not being conscious, with life seen as the exception. This default has no demonstration.
Interestingly we can see a progression within science, against great internal resistance, from white men are sentient and other humans are less so, with animals as machines and no one even mentions plants. To the current scientific consensus, where animals are seen as conscious intentional being and now plant intelligence and even choice is coming in to the mainstream. The bias is being overcome. From a pantheist perspective the bias is seen as 1) less likely to be the right default and 2) problematically counterintuitive - as you have been arguing.
Rupert Sheldrake is a wonderful scientist who has found many of these not justified (yet) defaults in mainstream science. To me it seems much more likely that interiority is universal and that the bias of humans being special is still causing tremendous unscientific resistance to now proven phenomena within science, but also to real rational evaluation of the default dead unintelligent universe with life as a rare scum on dead matter as the exception.
My cuo buono is: how does it serve people to have the defaults they have. I mean, why leave that type of criticism to the atheists?
How does it serve a group to see everything as machine-like, modular, and mainly dead?
Monsanto provides a great case study for that religion.