Is atheism a belief?

[Bucky Ball]

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I cannot live with this shame.
I shall commit seppuku at sunset.

I also did not know my "it's and itses" until hoc and Girly taught me my "it's and itses" on TTA.
So much for prep school and the Ivy League.
It's very important to know your it's and itses.
I have never done penance for this ignorance either ... so I'll throw that onto the fire of my fake seppuku this evening, also.

There is not a shred of evidence for "mind", and invoking it is nothing but woo.


.... so here we have an argument from ignorance. Neuro-science will answer that question some day,
There is no "magic".
https://www.scientificamerican.com/artic...ciousness/


No. A reductio ad absurdum argument.
Every single day in almost every medical center in the entire world, people come in with catastrophic brain injuries, ischemic strokes and various bleeds (aneurysmal, hypertensive) and trauma, and are declared brain dead. They really are dead. Totally brain. They have NO ability to experience anything, and before they are compassionately extubated or made "comfort measures only" they are TESTED for brain death. Their bodies are alive, their brains function IN NO WAY, and there is NOTHING they experience.

This guy knows NOTHING about how humans LEARN, what memory is, how it is formed, and how it is referenced when a human "has an experience".


No, no, and no.
It does not work that way AT ALL. And the fact it would be asked that way demonstrates he knows nothing about the subject.
First a human has to learn (normally as a child), by trial and error what "parallel lines'' mean, and that his sensation of that pattern matches what others call "parallel lines", and that memory is laid down. Later when the complex systems of sensory input, (in this case photons excite the cells at the back of the eye, if they are healthy), and the sensory input is referenced to the learned memory, and "organized" by the brain so recognition occurs, "Oh those are parallel lines". It's a complex series of chemical/physical events. Science KNOWS what that COMPLEX SERIES is. Obviously he doesn't.
http://news.mit.edu/2015/how-brain-recog...jects-1005

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I'm trying to be civil with you, but I'm finding it difficult.  

I could care less how you treat me. 

Saying that we are ignorant of something does not constitute an argument from ignorance.

No shit Sherlock. In this case it does., and that IS what your implied. 

I'm saying that given the brain, and only the brain, is the mechanism of human consciousness, we still don't know on what level of organization the most elemental essence of consciousness occurs.  If you disagree with this, and you seem very much to want to, you can clear up the mystery by answering this question: on what level of organization does the most elemental essence of consciousness occur?

And asking the question in that way belies your utter ignorance of neuro-science ... and in fact, I just showed you how asking that question in that way DOES NOT produce an answer. 

This is a non-trivial question, because the brain is a layering of very many systems of organization, from fully-integrated brain parts, right down to QM wave functions.  Some of those systems of organization are unique to the human brain, and some are not.  

It IS a trivial question, because without a brain, there IS NOT ONE example of consciousness, and you have none. You are DESPERATE to leave room for some sort of woo. 

We can all agree that the unique flavor of experience that is human being depends on a functioning human brain.  But that's not the question-- the question is on what level the simplest elements of subjective experience supervene.  What's required that minimal flash-in-the-darkness?  At what level of complexity can it be said, "There was no mind, but now there is?"

That may be YOUR question, and it may be important to you. It's not to anyone I know, and YOU don't get to tell science what is important. 
I do get you are also desperate to maintain the last vestige of hope for your possible god-in-a-box. I don't care. 

It seems to me that there's no cut-line, no critical mass of processing at which this can be said.  Rather, as you keep simplifying the processing system, you'll get something less and less human, then less and less recognizable as conscious by our standard.  Eventually, we'll say: "Yeah. . . I for sure wouldn't call that system conscious any more."  But so long as the system is capable of accepting inputs and producing outputs, it is in fact processing its environment.  And that basic functionality extends right down into the quantum world.

No. Take a class in neuro-science. "Processing the environment" is nowhere even near a definition of consciousness. The most simple one-celled organism "processes" its environment, but no one would say an amoeba is conscious. It has chemical reflexes. Your analogy is false and your reasoning totally stupid and irrelevant. 

Now, it may be that there IS some point at which there's nothing remotely like mind, but I don't know where that is. . . and neither do you.

You really are a patronizing arrogant ass hole. There IS NOTHING that can be referred to as MIND, and you have no evidence of any, AND guess what fuckwad ?
YOU don't get to tell ANYONE how or what they think.