Origin of consciousness?

I am working on bio-materials and have been learning some very cool things. I am not really working on genetic engineering but I got interested after reading about a new discovery in which a group of scientists have mapped the artificially synthesized genes on a natural bacteria. Artificial genes overtook natural genes and replicated to make new cells. I am not writing this post to explain this discovery but about the ‘questions’ that have been erupted by this discovery within me. Let me first make a background first before raising my questions.

We all know there are well-defined and finite number of elements (some may not have been discovered yet) but to our knowledge everything has been made by these elements or their combination. Our body, obviously, must have been made from these elements too. I have been working on making materials and know few techniques to make materials. But anything that has been made by any of the materials, that human has synthesized, can not have his own consciousness or a brain that can think (robots too have been programmed to work in a way and do not have independent mind). But when i see natural stuff like human being the first question that comes in my mind: how come some 100 odd materials be combined to obtain a ‘being’ which can think of its own, can even ask himself such questions (a robot don’t talk to himself ki why I have been made?).

Now when I gave it a thought what i thought was something like this:
How are humans controlled?: Through cells which perform complex reactions. Now, how are these cells controlled? Through ‘genes’, right(?) what exactly is a ‘gene’?: can be understood as a code (in simple language, i hope biology guys won’t get offended). In fact, in the discovery, about which i wrote in first paragraph; artificial genes were synthesized. I think they made one error in a million of codes and their mapping went wrong in starting and it took 4 months time to find that mistake. So, there is code (genes) that is transferred from generation to generation and even modified over the course of time. Now this code governs our cells which with combination of many processes defines an ‘individual’.

According to religious views: God (defined differently by everyone) created man and their story fits too. Let us suppose there is smart guy who created an arena (world here) and made some bots (some bacteria n all which finally transformed into human being after billions of years) and he used some programs (genes) and introduced in a body. So, we are like automated bots! Now, they claim that man has a pre-defined destiny n blah-2 which obviously can be explained by saying ki may be god has created different program for each. Karma n all used to describe this logic, i guess. But their logics are challenged by scientific work like genetic engineering.

According to scientific theories: Big bang n then evolution n all (i am reading about it and not complete yet). I think, as of now science is not able to explain the consciousness and once someone can make an artificial life (recent discovery is a small step in that) then we can have better understanding of this (how can we generate consciousness in combination of elements).

So, I don’t know which side to take. n i don’t know the best answer to the question. Will write more questions later with my perspective.