disbelief or skepticism in that which there is little or no evidence is mental illness?? but, on the contrary, complete and total intellectual confidence in specific a fantastic supernatural is an example for mental health?? ROFL! you may or may not be insane, but you are irrational NO DOUBT!! LOL
Intellectual ideas are not the mental illness. The mental illness is seen underlying the dogmatism of the atheists and their need to prove their ideas and disprove the ideas of the non atheists. It is one thing to say a man of emotion and faith may be driven by non reason to act, but when the so called rationalists who are flaunting reason objectivity and intellect are acting in the same manner as those they claim unreasonable, then mental illness on the part of the so called rationalists is a logical conclusion. You are definitely INSANE. Likely have a tiny little member too...
Then why are theists regularly engaged in false attribution or the quoting out of context those people who clearly do not share their views? What does that make them?
Well, the atheists claim the theists are emotional and irrational, so if they are correct in their description of the theist, what you describe would be normal for a theist. Why then do we see the so called rational and unemotional atheists behaving the exact same way as the theists in these threads? Only a mental illness would explain the cognitive dissonance that they deny and say doesn't exist...
Perhaps I am mistaken, but I do not recall a single instance of false attribution made by an atheist in this forum. However, this forum is replete with theists drawing false attributions and taking out of context either the writings or utterances of scientists or historical political figures. It seems that theists feel incomplete without them, and so they create a fantasy to live by that gives them comfort. Why does that sound familiar?
Here is where things get interesting - particularly for me because you hit upon my long time field of study - Electrical Engineering. I did quite a bit of graduate work in machine learning algos, neural networks, AI etc. So to answer your question, YES human thought is an ORGANIC process. Purely driven by electrochemical reactions and logically replicable by any sophisticated computer. In fact, all of our experiences with the external environment can be boiled down to electrochemical reactions. Thoughts are readable to a certain extent using MRI-like techniques. Thought decode is a work in progress. Honestly, I wish I was better at writing out what I intend to communicate, but, the short answer is that the "soul" is a human construct. All the things you mention have been explained in the last 10 years or so by most of the AI/Biomedical Engineering community. In fact, one of my professors wrote a book that will be interesting to you: http://www.amazon.com/Heaven-Chip-Visions-Society-Science/dp/0609805673 The only fair game left so to speak is Quantum Mechanics where we are still unaware of the real mechanisms governing the strong/weak nuclear force. This is where some scientists claim a "God" exists, but, this is a metaphorical God that represents a lack of knowledge rather than an explanation of the unknown.