Mitch -
If I say "Haha!" I would expect people to take it as an attempt at humour.
I cannot remember what the end of that statement was exactly, I think my connection glitched so I lost a sentence of two.
I was just stating that I personally find some of the posturing on this kind of topic forcibly polarized and with an aim to hammer home the ignorance of the other party rather than attempt to understand it. Of course this I snot always the case and doing so can be useful too.
I don't find that the OP has any weight to it. It may as well have argued against the ontological proof of love. This would need to present how we view "love" as existing and what kind of existence it has. I can see a very easy way to cover up this problem by expanding into other ambiguous terms such as "society", "feeling" and "emotion".
I wouldn't say I am presenting any kind of nominalism? I am pretty sure I just described a fw points that would contradict the general idea of nominalism. That said I am sure there is more obscure species of nominalism that would adhere to what I have said in part. All positions have a use and in some contexts they take on a universal meaning. The concept of Platonic Ideals may be useful in establish a ground from which to work from for certain problems (albeit negatively or otherwise.)
Which only means that the particular concept of "god" you speak of is ambiguous and harder to explicate (at least in your own mind), but you overstep yourself if you speak for everyone. Various people in history have had quite unambiguous concepts of "god." If speaking of the concept of the public at large, then the truth is such ambiguity exists for most things even when they are mathematically precise in a science such as physics.
I find this reveals the heart of the problem. I don't see anything wrong with me speaking for everyone, as you put it. My perspective is human and limited. So is everyone else's. That is the heart of what I am saying in relation to experience. We can all sit around a table and describe what it is about the table that makes it a table. I am sure many of us would express this "table" in ways the other had not thought of. In this sense we at least have the façade of a physical item to which we can objectively refer to. The blindness involved is in the concept of "table" having no physical existence yet it's so common to everyday life that we need not worry about it because it is sufficiently universally framed within our lexicon as to not need intense investigation. The concept of "god" is a much more daunting prospect because to make it more real we are inclined to refer to physical items to explicate it, yet funnily enough we're very ready to accept the abstract term of "table" because we understand it as a functional and cultural item. "god" is a much more difficult term to deal with and so I would suggest that a larger degree of openness is needed by all involved to either frame the concept or divide it up as necessary.
It is something like a "meaning" or an "essence", not an item to which any few terms or experiences can be specifically attached.
If someone is against intellectualism and has a view of "god" they are hardly going to be persuaded by intellectual argumentation. Because from this position we're left unable to bring to bear our intellect on this subject as much as we'd like to, it then leaves us open to exploring another avenue. Otherwise you'll find yourself arguing against people who either don't misuse our view of "god" to the extent that we'd like and so remain in agreement with the logical principle of the argument, but nevertheless wish to pursue a line against it that the person posing the argument is simply unwilling to take on wanting a more squishy target to which they can turn around and complain of a lacking intellectual capacity to deal with the problem and deem them "illogical" when they would readily admit, if they understand the term, that they are not making a logical refutation and that logic has little impact upon their beliefs.
I understand that this may be really hard to accept and to deal with. The choice is either we walk away and look for more prime pickings or explore the limitations of applying naught but logic to the topic at hand.
And how is that concept of "god" ambiguous and hard to explicate. This was just such an example I was thinking of above. It is not my concept of "god" BTW. Nor is it the only concept of "god" which is unambiguous.
Again you're consumed by the meaning of the words. If you think that is a good representation of what I mean you're wrong. It is barely anything like what I mean, yet in a narrow "material" sense it is merely an appropriate marker nothing like a experiential reference. When I said "nature/universe" it was most certainly a VERY ambiguous definition because I know what I wish to express would necessarily fail at every attempt because it is something that goes beyond words.
I could write all the words there are in every order possible for all time and still never encapsulate a coherent definition of "god" and what is more peculiar is I could do the very same thing for the term "table" and over time you'd grow less and less certain of what you previously thought "table" meant, the meaning of "table" would dissolve with enough explication. When it dissolves that is something like what I define as "god", but again I find that to be a very empty expression of what I would wish to say and I'd need to continue and continue no end.
And the argumentation against what I say here can easily be brough tto bear against me by stating that we are required to work within certain limits. I agree because it is necessarily so. To know we work within limits is probably the most telling thing there is regarding the disparity between those that say "god exists" and those that say "proof is required."