What Kind of Atheist are You?

[Red Economist]

OK, thanks for explaining that

Personally I'm a methodological naturalist, so I feel no need to deny the existence of that which we can't measure.

I asked my wife yesterday if I was stubborn (not randomly, it was part of a conversation) and she says not normally, but I can be when it comes to things like ghosts. Of course, she is confusing being stubborn with being sceptical. I don't claim there are no ghosts either.

Consciousness really is the fly in the ointment for little piss ants like me. I have to admit it very much feels exactly like some sort of "extra" thing, existing in its own place. I feel helpless to try and properly explain it using science, to say "where" it is, or if I'm even asking the right questions. With this, there are a lot of alternatives which I don't rule out, and I feel much less confident about smoothing it over with science as I do ghosts and religion. I have to resort to "No idea". I can only offer guesses. I don't even know what the default position is, as the only evidence I have about it appears to contradict any scientific position I put forward. I can't pretend there is no evidence like I can say about other things, just that I cannot properly assess the evidence.

Consciousness is the hardest problem in philosophy, so I don't think you should feel bad about not being able to understand what it is. The development of Neuroscience gives us the possibility that questions can now be scientifically asked; but it's still deep in Neurophysiology that we're going to have to establish that answers can be found. Materialism is my best guess as I'm reluctant to say it is objectively true because of how much would unravel if that were the case. Historically speaking, We are still only at the dawn of scientific knowledge so there are probably lots of surprises in store as we figure out who we really are in a more scientific way.