Is atheism a belief?

[bennyboy]

Just to preface, I’m no scientist, so if I’m using scientific terms or phrases incorrectly please feel free to course correct. To your first question, I think that the difference between ‘processing information’ and ‘irrelevant stuff happening’ is in the eye of the beholder, so to speak. I would say an atom “processing” a photon is not fundamentally different from a brain processing sensory input.

Yeah, that's why I wonder about a possible anthropomorphist special pleading: "information processing" is whatever it is that we are doing. Therefore whenever we see systems doing what we do, they must be conscious, and whenever we see systems not doing what we do, they must not be.

I'm not necessarily even sure that's wrong-- but I think it's something that needs to be demonstrated to be right. Otherwise, for example, we are like to give rights to android robots when we make them sufficient proxies for human behavior. We may pat ourselves on the backs and believe that WE are gods, not knowing (and not able to know) that silicon-based processing, for whatever reason, cannot actually sustain subjective awareness. We will have people saying things like "Oh. . . mind is just information processing, and this is also information processing" and confidently create a new race of p-zombies while the beautiful thing that is subjective human experience might be allowed to die out.

 The difference in relevance is matter of degree. Despite sharing similar fundamental ‘energetic interchanges’, as you called it, brains are brains, and not storm clouds. They do what that highly specialized organ has evolved to do, which is process input.  So, is there a reason to think that processing at this level of complexity could not yield consciousness?

Clearly, humans experience the universe in a way that storm clouds do not. I'd liken an entire storm system to the processing power (maybe!) of a neuron. So we're pretty darned special in my admittedly biased opinion.

My problem with waving toward the brain and saying "there it is" is that it doesn't really explain on what level of organization the most essential "magic" happens: at what degree of complexity would you say there was no consciousness at all under it, but now there is some element of subjective awareness?

Clearly, an entire brain can experience subjectively. Brain damage studies show that quite massive brain injuries still leave some ability to experience, but in radically altered ways. But what about, say, a few dozen neurons which fire in response to parallel lines? If you could isolate them (say by carefully removing them from the retina and the visual cortex), would there be an isolated "parallel line experience" all on its lonesome? What about a single neuron-- is there some elemental experience in the simple firing of a neuron? What about a single chemical exchange?

To look at the extremes, we could say that theories could range from:
(1) panpsychism: ALL material interactions are processing information, and contain very tiny elements of mind, and when material is layered to process complex information, you get more and more complex conglomerates of mind. There's no critical mass at which there was no mind, and then suddenly mind supervenes. Interestingly, if this were proven true, I'd probably be at the front of the Android Rights parade.

(2) anthropocognitivism (I'm just making up that word): Only a highly-functioning organic brain like ours sustains sufficiently complex enough information processing to have anything like real subjective awareness. It's possible that even some animals (like insects) aren't sufficiently developed to be subjectively aware. If this were known to be true, I'd be in the Android Rights Over My Dead Body parade.

If I had to choose between these two, I'd massively favor the first. I acknowledge that the truth may be somewhere in the middle.

So, back to the OP, if the former were true, I'd say that everything in the Universe is intrinsically mindful. I'd look to the apparent awareness of the Universe in resolving quantum states after-the-fact in double-slit experiments as evidence that literally everything that goes on in and around us is linked in much more special ways than we can imagine. I would have no problem at all with a modern science-based "religion" which found spiritual or psychological solace in this super-connectedness. You could say something like, "I believe every particle in the Universe was entangled in the Singularity, and that we are all expressions of those original moments as they dance through time" or something hippie like that. (I probably wouldn't-- I'd probably just go check was on Netflix)

If the latter were true, then it would look very much like magic to me: no mind no mind no mind no mind. . . MIND! I'd be very curious indeed how the brain could pull off this tadah! of creating such a special property which existed almost nowhere in the Universe.

It's possible that the truth is somewhere in the middle, but I'd still have that same question: why is it that THIS is the level of organization at which there was nothing like mind, but now suddenly there is?

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What we've seen is exactly what we would expect.  Some people reject categorization for reasons™ other-than the accuracy of that categorization.  Whether this is an atheist who doesn't identify as an atheist, or an atheist expressing a gnostic position.

We can repeat this experiment with quantum cats or mind (or any other object) and we're likely to get precisely the same results.

Under your semantic, then you could choose to call me an agnostic atheist if you wanted.  I can't stop you.

I think in some parts of the States especially, saying you are "not a theist" is a perfectly reasonable and important position, socially speaking, and doesn't really require any particular position on religious ideas at all-- more like, an aversion to the constant stream of bullshit you're faced with, and sometimes vehemently imposed on with.

However, where I come from the issue of religion is much less important-- I wouldn't even bother saying that I wasn't a theist: nobody asks (usually), nobody cares, and they'd want to know why I was bothering to make a word for it.  It really would be like going around telling people I lacked a belief in unicorns.  Lucky me for not having people banging on my door Sunday morning, shouting from soap boxes about the second coming of Christ, asking me all the time if I'd accepted Boobledyboo as my personal Lord and Savior, and so on.

Maybe that's part of the disconnect-- what to you is the essence of atheism is to me fairly inconsequential.  I'm just speculating, but I wonder.