Malintent

In this case, "The Unknown". The unknown is very God to him.

Perm

Yeah this reminds me of one of my friends, who insists he's a deist.

Friend: "I'm a deist."
Me: "What does that mean?"
Friend: "Well I think there was probably something that created the universe, but it's unknowable and doesn't affect us."
Me: "Why do you think that?"
Friend: "I just do."
Me: "So if you can't tell whether it's there or not, what good is it?"
Friend: "I'm just a deist, dude."

From an atheist's viewpoint, it looks like you're just afraid to call yourself an atheist.

Splarnst

If so, then you should have stopped talking right there.

God could be a Chia Pet. What's the point of defining something into existence?

Your god is undefined. The concept is of no value to anyone else if you cannot communicate what it is.

Malintent

Funny, I had a conversation with a close friend of mine just last night, that never really thought about god, religion, philosophy, etc.. I forget how it came up, but he wanted to know how his worldview would be categorized. So I asked him a series of questions like; "do you believe in any god defined by any religion you know of" (no). "Do you believe there could be ghosts, spirits, the supernatural in general" (no). "Do you believe that everything that exists is governed by the same laws of nature and that there never was, or will be an exception" (yes). So I said, "You're an atheist, dude", which was surprising to me cause I took him for a moderate agnostic - for no particular reason. His reaction was less surprising. He said, "NO! Really? I'm not an atheist". I just looked at him for a few seconds with raised eyebrows and he then said, "I guess so".

There seems to be some resistance to the label, indeed.

DMC

Even "The Unknown" is an adjective. Unknown what?

Archer

I was kinda taking the OP's thinking to mean something like this.You can neither prove or disprove a God.From this,one can only carry in them a belief towards the definition.The problem with belief as applied to a god,is it always fails the same rule.The rule that applies to all of us is that although we can vary in our beliefs,we cannot go beyond the belief itself.If you think of the most extreme ends of the definition of belief such as " God exist" and "God does not exist" they both while opposing,fall under the same definition,belief.No Man has ever been able to transcend thru the boundary of belief.We cannot go beyond the boundary's of our own humanese.Now when a person states that "a God exist" or "a God does not exist" they are simply pretending to have gotten thru the belief boundary and have the true answer.
:banghead:

tjakey

Why is it when I say, "Santa Claus does not exist," or "The tooth fairy does not exist," no one calls my statement a "belief?" But if I say "There is no god," suddenly THAT is a belief. Yet the fact is I say "god does not exist" for the exact same reasons I say "Santa Clause does not exist."

I was taught there was a Santa by people I trusted and so as a child I believed in the jolly old dude. As a slightly older child I learned that Santa was a basically harmless invention, a story, and existed only as a character in the story. In the exact same way I was taught there was a god by people I trusted. Though it took many more years I eventually learned that the god was also an invention, not as harmless as Old St. Nick, and also existed only as a character in the stories.

Try as I might I cannot find any difference between the two experiences of learning. There is no god. It is not a belief, it is a discovery.

Emil

Funny how you know, that god is not good or evil. and not concerned about humans etc. and still claim that it is impossible to know whether or not it exists.

Then you settle on as using god as a metaphor for ignorance. Weird, normally people wouldn't want to identify god with ignorance.

Besides, it falls into weak agnostic atheism IMO.

Species8472

Sure, but he's not really doing that, he is arguing that God IS the unknown, that is what creationists tend to do too, reducing their own god to a hole-plugging device. That however is fine by me, as it reduce god to something that can be replaced with fact every time science plug a hole.

Malintent

You are mistaken. "Unknown" is a noun in this usage. From wiki there are 3 definitions, all nouns:

* A lack of knowledge
* The variables to be solved for in a mathematical equation
* An actor or footballer or singer who is not yet famous

I agree that "Unknown" can be used as an adjective, when describing state. That is not how it is being used here - as the name of the group of knowables that are not yet known.. Your statement sounds to me like someone saying that "The Apple" is an adjective because it describes a kind of fruit. This is a similarly mistaken categorization.