We are not nearly as determined by our genes as once thought.

I do certainly agree with this - and that this is all that we can learn scientifically about consciousness, this is the extent to which science and engineering can penetrate it.

I think the term consciousness is like the term, running.  Running is an activity that draws on multiple sources of input and coordinates these separate sources to have a process where feet, legs and hips project an organism in the direction sighted by the eyes.

Science can measure the various streams of information and energy sources that work with the leverage of the body.  It can't directly measure "running".   Observation can only have benchmarks that are output from running, such as a change in location at various speeds.  The experience of running is something entirely else, from the science measurements of activity that contributes to running. 

Is running part of consciousness, because when we run we experience runningness?  It gets confusing when an "amalgam" of processes is unified as an abstraction.  For me, the underlying variable that is at the heart of the matter is understanding - not consciousness.  I am "selling" understanding as a direct mental activity that effects real-world probabilities.

I am aware that this is not mainstream.  If you are conscious - it is measured only subjectively.  If you understand a relationship - this can be modeled as an informational program.  A simulation of consciousness points in a thousand vectors.  A simulation of a specific understanding shows how there is a real-world change in probability from a change in negentropy from mental work.

Let me say a little something about ID.  I appreciate Mike Behe's observation of design in the bio-chemical structures of living things.  However, the argument extended by ID is out of date.

The RM & NS -- which was The IDEA for Evo for so long --- has died.  (Some on both sides seem to not grasp the sea change that has emerged in the last twenty years).  ID tried to knock down random-walk design, saying an answer came from outside natural systems.  The reason being -- get this now -- the premise of casual closure of physics eliminating other routes for design to happen naturally via mind.  The argument to verify ID was to try say that it since design couldn't come from special physical events, well it must be......  

The premise of Materialism dissolves away in the face of Informational Realism, where Information Science finds other methods for living designs. Bioinformatics can model some of the process steps well and is seeking more.

The case, now, is we know RM does not create new information.  We are now uncovering how living things communicate, with their own heredity communication systems "toolkit" and bring functional cybernetic information into their future genomes.  

Hence both Materialistic and ID views are both are overrun and wholehearted sacked.  We are left to update bio-evolutionary theory now that we know that there are Lamarckian "leaks" of information objects from generation to generation.  Mental Evolution, as Charles Darwin and George Romanes, promoted is an essential part of the story.

Evolution is all about adaptation in both mental and physical environments.  It is the opposite of a story about determinism.