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Sure - no worries.
Ah... the definition from Anselm's ontological argument. Yeah... it's a really bad one, IMO.
For starters, by relying on subjective terms like "more" (or "greater" in his original formulation, IIRC), it's not really any less vague than the term "God" was in the first place.
And secondly, it has built into it some very strange assumptions about human conception, the most important being that there can be only one thing that is "more" (or "greater") enough to be beyond conception. IOW, you and Anselm implictly say that we can conceive of
every single non-God thing. I've never once seen anyone genuinely try to address this rather hubristic assumption built into the definition you're using.
And if you don't deal with it, then "one that nothing more can be conceived" isn't "God"; it's "a member of a set of which God may or may not also be a member."
Also, since we're talking about this in the context of universality of beliefs, I'd question your other implicit assumption that Anselm's definition of God even works with all the theistic beliefs you're trying to cite in support of your position.
And 50 million Elvis fans can't be wrong, right? The mere fact that a belief is widely shared doesn't mean it's correct.
... especially not if you put stock in the concept of "memes" popularized by Richard Dawkins: i.e. that there are ideas that get spread because of things other than their truth.
I think we're talking past each other here, or at least we're using the same words to talk about different things.
I'm not saying that religion hasn't been (and doesn't continue to be) a significant force in the shaping of human society; of course it has. This tangent started when AmbiguousGuy objected to people "cheapening" God... IOW, he was implying that it would be wrong for anyone not to value God. Since I took this as his way of telling me to value God, I tried to ask him why I should, as I think is appropriate when anyone asks me to do anything - it's important to find out if there's a good reason behind the request.
In the case of God, I think we're each free to place our own value on him/her/it/them - including no value at all - unless God himself (which is something very different from
belief in God, which I think you seem to be conflating here) is going to impose himself in our lives... IOW if he actually exists and can be known to exist. Otherwise, it doesn't really matter whether we value God or not.
No, I think you just missed my point, that's all.
Of course there are epistemiological limits to human knowledge. Of course we're limited creatures who can't have perfect understanding, so there will always be a gap to shove not just God, but any idea into. Still, I think it's sometimes a useful exercise to compare religious claims not against some standard of perfect knowledge, but instead against some other idea that we've decided with practical certainty is foolish or bad.
My whole point was to confront an idea that's usually built into arguments like the one you gave in your last post: that "we don't know with certainty" implies an equal 50-50 probability of being right. It doesn't. We can say "we don't know with certainty" for every single premise anyone can put forward, as long as it's not self-contradictory. Appealing to this fact as an argument for belief in God puts belief in God in the exact same category as every single crackpot idea ever made, while at the same time gives absolutely no positive reason to even suspect that God might actually exist.
I was going at things the other way: I was trying to point out that just because human knowledge has limits doesn't mean we must always take "God exists" as a reasonable proposition.
