"Supposing there was no intelligence behind the universe, no creative mind. In that case, nobody designed my brain for the purpose of thinking. It is merely that when the atoms inside my skull happen, for physical or chemical reasons, to arrange themselves in a certain way, this gives me, as a by-product, the sensation I call thought. But, if so, how can I trust my own thinking to be true? It's like upsetting a milk jug and hoping that the way it splashes itself will give you a map of London. But if I can't trust my own thinking, of course I can't trust the arguments leading to Atheism, and therefore have no reason to be an Atheist, or anything else. Unless I believe in God, I cannot believe in thought: so I can never use thought to disbelieve in God." — C.S. Lewis
Elon Musk explains why atoms can't account for what you're feeling right now:
Lex Fridman asked whether understanding the universe means understanding intelligence. Musk took it straight past intelligence.
Elon: "There are some fundamental questions of like, what is thought, what is emotion. Is it really just one atom bumping into another atom? It feels like something more than that."
He doesn't think this is a gap that gets filled in later. He thinks it's a gap we're standing in right now.
Elon: "I think we're probably missing some really big things. Something that'll be obvious in retrospect."
Then he names the part no physical model has a place for.
Elon: "On what dimension does thought exist? What dimension do emotions exist? We feel them very strongly. I suspect there's more to it than atoms bumping into atoms."
Which leaves two options. He picks the stranger one.
Elon: "Either perhaps everything's conscious or nothing is conscious. One of the two. I like the former. Everything conscious just seems more fun."
Elon: "We're composed of atoms, and those atoms are composed of quarks and leptons, and those quarks and leptons have been around since the beginning of the universe."
Same particles since the start. Somewhere in the arrangement, they began to feel like someone.