This is actually an interesting notion, Jerry, and it intrigues me. To consider god, gods, or other spiritual beings as ideas, rather than actual sentient beings. Would you then say that a god is really a personification of a culture? It represents the ideals of the culture in which it exists. The nuances of the Norse pantheon gave strong indication of the ideas held within that culture. The importance of battle and struggling against a harsh world, the recognition that great wisdom was more powerful than strength of arms, understanding that virtue is a difficult path to walk. All of those lessons are taught by their gods.
Would the point really be the lessons, then? And the characters in the stories (the gods) are there to illustrate those lessons? What does the Jewish/Christian/Muslim god have to teach us? Those ideas, collectively held, are what constitute a god, then. No entity with intelligence, but a viral idea. I'm comfortable with this notion because it appropriately places this collection of ideas as a tool for us to use, rather than something greater than us. These ideas are a part of us, and they are changeable. We can improve on them over time, grow beyond what we are now, and leave lesser ideas in the past.
However, once we get to this point, I see no reason to continue with the notion of gods anymore. If we recognize them as a sort of cultural codex, we can simply call them what they actually are. The collection of our values and ideas... our culture.