What Kind of Atheist are You?

[AFTT47]

I think consciousness is a process, not a thing or substance.  An analogy for this is fire.  Primitive people thought that fire was a thing, but the modern understanding of it is as a process, not a substance.  Fire is the rapid oxidation of a material (called "fuel").  Stop the process, and you stop the fire.  There isn't any nonphysical part of it, but it isn't a substance; it is a process.

I like that explanation. It's still hard to imagine how this process results in this feeling of 'I' but I still prefer this to speculation that thought or consciousness is something primal or perhaps a fundamental force of nature. We'll get if figured out but probably not in the lifetime of anyone here now.