it's an uncomfortable topic for a lot of people because the idea that sapience/sentience is just a side effect of our brains being pattern matching machines with a giant knowledge graph of neurons means that we're not that special
Which begs the question, why isn't that 'special'? Still sounds pretty special to me.
hard to answer that without it looking like religion bashing to be honest
No, it is emergent behavior. Pattern matching does not require that there be some sort of conscious recognition of your state of being. It simply requires you to respond to stimuli. But we have the ability to abstract our thoughts away from stimuli which allows conscious thought. This is an unexpected result.
I don't think it means that at all. Depending on what you mean by "special", I guess.
Because there's no reason for anyone to take seriously this notion. It's not scientific and is just a different kind of religious nonsense.
there's nothing religious about entertaining the idea that sentience could just be an emergent property
Can you prove it objectively? You have no reason to think so other than it's the opposite of what other religions think.