"A Chemical Factory wrapped in a water proof bag"

This is term used by my science teacher to describe us mere human being while discussing the affects of a certain chemical upon a human. This firstly slipped through my mind however; hours after, it came to mind again. I thought through my life and experiences and tried to match this term, "A chemical factory wrapped in a water proof bag" and how it actually related to me. Now i felt this was a rather un ethical way to describe people as, life seemed alot deeper and meaningfull than this.

This topic then led to me on to the issue of conciousness, emotions and many other features that make us human. I began to wonder how such a system may work. If we are just a host of chemical reactions, how does such reactions deem us concious with emotions. I searched a few forums and came across an interesting topic summing up on how many of such reactions would be needed to raise conciousness and whether it was a sliding affect or a certain point at where this state occured. I began to wonder whether as humans, through such reactions we could compose a machine who displayed signs of conciousness or whether there was more to us and how we operate.

Emotions came under the same category. I could not grasp the idea that emotions i feel such as love, hatred, joy and anger could all be a chain of chemical reactions and nothing more. Now this got me thinking on the soul and if it existed how it would operate, would it be the system that runs our emotions and other functions. I wondered if this souled resembled our physical appearance or whether it was an invisible yet detectable force.

Now this all led me to the conclusion that we were more than just a chemical factory and it was an unfair term to coin us beings. That us humans had more sophistication, emotion and experience then any factory, computer or any other man made systems!