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You can experiment with this bit of rhetoric by using Fester Chugabrew's analogy: Our knowledge of the play expands, our knowledge of the director shrinks. In this instance, it conflates the two into one.

And thereby loses all sense of the play being a collaborative effort of the director, the actors, the supporting crew, all in service of a compelling storyline.

What is really left of the play, when one does that? What can we say about it, then?

Plus to conflate the commensurable with the incommensurable is to commit a major category error. Subsequent thinking according to its terms will be distorted, a falling away from the truth of reality....

Thank you, cornelis, for your perceptive suggestion of this "experiment." It so well captures the "nit" of the problem we're picking over here....

Thank you both so much for this excellent sidebar!

betty boop: Plus to conflate the commensurable with the incommensurable is to commit a major category error. Subsequent thinking according to its terms will be distorted, a falling away from the truth of reality....

So very true. Perhaps some who assert that argument will see it better the way you have framed it.

I am late to the party. Thank you betty for the ping.

If God is our explanation of the unknown then God is unknown. If He were known then that which He knows would be known by those who know Him.

For the atheist God is unknown. Only to the atheist is God the explanation of the unknown since, to the atheist, He is unknown.

For an atheist God diminishes as knowledge increases. For a believer God increases as knowledge increases.