Fair points. I think that this sort of game-playing might contribute to people feeling like god exists, but it’s definitely a bad reason. But in that case, perhaps we might say that god-the-concept ‘exists’ (concepts and numbers are in pretty much the same boat re: existence) but god-the-being-with-causal-effects doesn’t exist, and people are trying to smuggle properties from one to the other by using the same name for both.
This is sort of a reverse of the ontological argument.
Fair points. I think that this sort of game-playing might contribute to people feeling like god exists, but it’s definitely a bad reason. But in that case, perhaps we might say that god-the-concept ‘exists’ (concepts and numbers are in pretty much the same boat re: existence) but god-the-being-with-causal-effects doesn’t exist, and people are trying to smuggle properties from one to the other by using the same name for both.
This is sort of a reverse of the ontological argument.