Consciousness is fundamental to reality. Science-based thinking (but not science itself) has put matter as the fundamental element but actually has never been able to prove it. To be able to prove that matter gives rise to consciousness, you’d have to step out of consciousness and point to matter. Which you cannot do. Not talking about individual consciousness where you can just point at someone’s brain: that experience of pointing at someone’s brain is happening inside consciousness, how else would you know about it.

Not to be confused with Solipsism, that’s the thinking mind. I’m talking about Idealism, the raw state of pure experience before thought.

Science-based thinking has put matter as the fundamental element but actually has never been able to prove it.

The scientific method has never proved anything ever. It just fails to disprove, and the theory gets stronger every single time.

I would posit that you (and Plato) are just wildly defining undisprovable concepts that serve no purpose and can neither be proven nor disproven. Which makes your hypothesis more like a religion.

Which makes your hypothesis more like a religion.

I wouldn’t be so dismissive. This is a very active area of research, and sometimes philosophical ideas like this can be the launchpad from which new scientific theories can be constructed.

An example of this is panpsychism (the idea that all matter has some level of consciousness). Many consider this a woo-woo theory. But now we have Integrated Information Theory, which is probably the most popular theory of consciousness right now. And it is a panpsychist theory: if its mathematical measure of consciousness is correct, then all matter would have some nonzero level of consciousness. 

Now, I don’t subscribe to this theory, but thats not the point. My point is that with immature fields of research like this, we have to tolerate philosophical speculations (we have to start from somewhere, right?). So though you may not like these speculations right now, there is a really real chance they may the groundwork for an innovative scientific theory.

So let’s not immediately shut down these ideas by labelling them as “religion”. Lets give these ideas room to breathe, grow and mature, because thats how we make progress when we’re just starting out. 

I wouldn’t be so dismissive. This is a very active area of research

Well, like with all religions speculative fields with zero evidence back it, I’ll consider it further when they present some empirically testable claims. Right now, it rests on the same level as “The rock-god Unk-Amun who lies in backyard created the universe via timetravel, which can be shown by the number of atoms in Unk-Amun”.

Or possibly “The number of peas on my dinnerplate shows the level of my household’s Runath”. What is Runath? Well, it’s obviously the thing that’s measured by the number of peas on my dinnerplate.

it is a panpsychist theory

That does not speak in it’s favor.