Agnostic vs Atheist

aah, it's so bittersweet when someone takes the words right out of your mouth: link

"Here is my position - very briefly. It is important to distinguish between propositions that are false and those that are outside the arena of science. Those ideas that cannot be tested, even in theory, are simply not science, and they are unknowable (I am talking about factual claims, not value judgments).

Unknowable propositions are worse than wrong - they are unnecessary. As I said - deism is unnecessary. That doesn’t mean there is no god - it means that the notion of a god (depending upon how it is conceived, but the basic idea of a being outside the confines of our physical universe and its laws) is simply unknowable. It is simply wrong to say that we can know god does not exist. The only logically consistent position is agnosticism. But you can combine that with the notion that such unfalsifiable claims are unnecessary. If someone chooses to have faith in such a thing, like the FSM, I really don’t care - as long as they keep it pure faith and do not make any logical or empirical claims - that’s cheating.

Regarding the term agnostic - I would rather have the opportunity to explain to people why I am agnostic than to create the other misconception (which is absolutely used as often as possible by believers) that atheists have faith in the non-existence of god. You’re burned either way, and you will have to explain yourself, so don’t shy away from philosophical purism."

Interestingly, this is the same guy who made the comment about the ghost in the machine being dead. Dualism and deism are two different things. However, yet another comment from the original thread interprets Brooks' take on duality in a way that resonates with me:

"...it seems to me that Brooks is advocating higher states of consciousness emerging as epiphenomena, rather than a dual quality of the mind, as implied by your “ghost in the machine” remark."

To me, this is the real mystery. I wholly accept the material nature of existence, and yet I still find it magical. You can have both -- complete materialism (even determinism! more on that one day) -- and yet there is still a fantastic, infinitely rich mystery to the whole thing. It's like the Mandelbrot set -- infinitely complex, yet described by a simple formula. It seems to be an intuition that comes most easily to those who have spent some time thinking about information and computation (ie, computer science and information theory). Perhaps it's just another way of saying things that have been said before, but in a somewhat more scientifically palatable vocabulary.

Something like that.