Quote Originally Posted by afghooey
To me, personally, thinking of the universe as something as alive and conscious as I am, rather than thinking of myself as a soul trapped in a mechanical body, is more appealing.
In answer to your first question, computers are built to model certain human brain functions, most notably an ordering of logic. But to take this point and jump from it to say that brains are essentially biological computers reduces the brain to our current understanding of it. It ignores the possibility that there are processes within our minds that are invisible to us.

Computers are impressive, sure. But before they existed would you have said that the brain was a biological abacus? Until artificial intelligence and cognition arive on the scene for computer science, there are rather obvious gaps in the analogy.

By the same analogy however, I would say that all organisms are also machines, and so the dividing characteristic would have to be biological or mechanistic traits. Rather than organism vs machine. Would that work?