"How do you know atoms aren't conscious?" A Response

I didn't claim to know that they weren't, I merely pointed out that panpsychism (the belief that matter is "conscious") is a matter of ideological faith, not science.  I would never claim that there is any possibility of scientifically disposing of that rising article of atheist faith, I would hold that will never be possible.  I also hold that science is incapable of confirming it, either.

Since, whatever else you can say about it, this proposed "consciousness" in atoms is not like human consciousness.  So, right there, you have the problem of how that "consciouness" turns into the human experience of consciousness.  It will be rather difficult to settle how the "consciousness" of atoms gives rise to human consciousness - the only consciousness to which any human being has direct experience of and access to, the very thing which defines the word - since there is no definition of what it is. 

And any definition of atomic "consciousness" is most likely one of those illusions that science so often has given rise to.  I don't think there's any way to measure such stuff but my guess is that any such "consciousness" is more likely to be an illusion than God by a very high probability. Whatever else you can say about God, no theologian of the same status as the panpsychists mistakes the mind of God as mere consciousness.  I think, as it is, the current fad of panpsychism among atheist philosophers and scientists is a product of their own ideological preferences only they will, in the hard-bitten cases, pretend it is something which science can access or that philosophical methods can discern with some degree, any degree, of reliability.   And what you can say about the "consciousness" of atoms under panpsychism, applies to the proposed consciousness of non-living larger structures and accumulations of matter. To claim that an igneous rock the size of a human being is "conscious" in some way as a conglomeration of molecules forces the question of why they wouldn't have the same kind of consciousness as a person does. 

The installation of "consciousness" into atoms and larger structures of non-living matter seems to me to be the same kind of thing as attributing consciousness to the entirely human created entities proposed to have "artificial intelligence."   It looks to me to be most related to the installation of human like personalities into teddy bears and dolls and pet rocks.  And to old fashioned idol worship of the most primitive kind.

I have come to think of these things, these kinds of theories, especially those in and around questions of consciousness, minds, behavior, as like hour glasses that are filled quickly from the top as the former devotees of other schemes of materialism flock to them but which run down gradually or rapidly never to be flipped over again.   The problems with them accumulate as they are tested and all of them seem to carry basic defects that insure their discontinuance.

The greatest likelihood is that this is all a desperation move by those increasing numbers of hold-over 19th century materialists who have had to face the fact that atheist-materialist-scientistic ideology will not convince people that they do not experience the reality of their own consciousness, the thing about them that makes all experience and knowledge of any kind possible.  The current resurgence of panpsychism is just another in an atheist dance of the veils in which they keep adding one more as the last one is in danger of falling apart.  It is just the latest attempt for them to keep their leaking, floundering ideology afloat.