I think the biggest mistake conventional apologetics makes is neglecting any talk of the need or use for God in addition arguments for him. Clifford Williams distinguishes these by calling the first arguments from need and the latter evidentialist arguments.
Ah, so I see you have learned in our discussion that reducing "God" to "timeless, spaceless first cause" isn´t getting you anywhere - simply because it doesn´t appeal to any of the needs or uses that people have for Gods?
And I think anyone without a palpable sense of the usefulness of God, including how he satisfies certain needs (such as meaning or metameaning, comfort, etc.), will have no use for even considering evidentialist arguments seriously.
Does not really follow. There are a lot of things I have no need nor use for (let´s say the ebola virus) but I can´t help considering evidentialist arguments for it. The reason is, that
there are evidentialist arguments.
There's just no need to, as there's no cash value at the end of the deal.
Depending on the God concept there
would be "cash value at the end of the day", just like there is "cash value" in the question "Does the ebola virus exist?".
You might as well be arguing on how many angels dance on a pinhead: if we knew a number here it wouldn't change anything at all, so for the vast majority of people it just doesn't matter.
Well, I think you are making progresses and you´ve got it at least half right.
Convincing people by appealing to the need for or usefulness of something, of the beauty of the idea requires one strategy: This is where you can tell your narratives, where you can bring up your intuition, where you can manipulate emotionally, where your knowledge as a shrink may come in handy. (And for whatever reason, once they have been convinced that the existence of something is desirable, many people do not even ask whether it exists or not. That´s basically the success story of every charlatan - which is not to say that everyone who uses this strategy is necessarily a charlatan.)
Convincing people of the existence of something requires quite a different strategy. It means coming up with actual evidence.
So since you seem to ask yourself why your apologetics attempts are so unsuccessful, I will tell you:
You keep mixing the two, and that weakens each of the approaches.
If you want to seduce people (and I mean that in an entirely positive way), you are not well advised to start mentioning "truths", "facts" and "evidence". It just brings people to the very doubts that make seduction unsuccessful.
Likewise, if you want to convince people rationally (evidentially), you are well advised not to appeal to your intuition, to bring up long-winded sophisms or theoretical arguments: You have created a setting in which everyone awaits your announce evidence - and everytime you evade to emotionalisms, intuitionalisms, appeals to need or usefulness, beauty of your idea even, they will be left assuming that you don´t have what you claim to have: evidence.
And it's much worse than it looks here: for lots of atheists and agnostics, I'd bet that it's not just a lack of a realization of needs or uses for God, but that if God exists he creates more problems than he provides.
And that´s another point where you actually immediately lose me: You are saying "God" as though you had already told everyone what exactly you are talking about - whereas there are countless different god concepts in store. If you even only want to find out whether I have use and need for God, you would at first have to tell me what God is, for purposes of your seduction attempt. I certainly have no need nor use for a mere term.
I'm speaking pretty specifically of one thing: the doctrine of hell. It's like there's a sort of fundamentalist presupposition happening with many atheists, where if God exists then he would be a mean Hell-loving deity; therefore God can't possibly exist,
Well, that would be a terrible argument (it´s a non-sequitur if there ever was one) - and while there certainly are some atheists who make it occasionally, I must say I am a bit frustrated to see you summarizing your many discussions here with various atheists to the worst argument that can possibly presented.
and nowhere in this thinking are considerations that are more moderate conceptions of him, which basically what philosophy of religion is all about.
Again:
This is completely irrelevant once you try to argue rationally (evidentially). Hardly anybody is so stupid to deny the existence of something just because its existence would be undesirable. If you have evidence, present it. Everything else will make you appear evasive.
Whereas on the seduction route, I think you can easily acquire believers by modeling your god concept after their psychological needs. The entire NewAgeist and Universalist movements are living proof of that.
This doesn't just apply with thinking about God, but thinking about anything: unless we're incredibly disciplined (and few of us are to this point), we're going to have psychological biases which determine which arguments are (as William James said) alive or dead to us.
Again, you have that half right. If you go down the seduction route, this is an entirely accurate observation. Whereas if you go down the evidentialist route, all that counts is your evidence. The problem on this route is that you don´t have any, and you keep beating around the bush and finally try the seduction route, which has already been burnt by your announcement that you are going to talk about evidence, "truth" and such things.
God is to most atheists a dead argument because he has no seen usefulness or satisfies any needs, and with many conceptions even creates more psychological problems than he resolves, notably an eternal Hell.
First off: God isn´t an argument at all. There are certain requirements for something to be an argument.
Secondly (and I am afraid I am repeating myself here): If you want to appeal to people´s needs etc., don´t even use the word "argument". Because doing so isn´t an argument, and by using this word you make them expect an argument that you aren´t even intending to present.
God, as far as I am concerned, is a projection of people´s needs on an external entity. If there is anything that creates a psychological problem with me, it is that there are people who feel good about the concept of hell.
I am familiar with quite some god concepts that don´t involve a hell, and yet I don´t believe in them. So no.
Received, I for one will openly tell you that I am open to adopt the most beautiful and appealing metaphysical concept I am presented - provided it isn´t too self-contradicting or clashing with observable facts. Simply because that´s what metaphysics (due to lack of evidence) can be about at best.
So everybody go ahead and seduce me. But: as soon as you bring up "evidence" or "truth" or "reality" you will have lost me immediately. Just like a lady you want to seduce will start switching on her brain once you mention "pregnancy", "STDs", "contraception" or "your husband" on the way.
Response: "well, for me it's all about argument." Response to response: the only person for whom it's just about arguments is a person without a pulse; you have a pulse, ergo, you have other motivations than just evidentialist arguments.
Are you talking to yourself now?