Well, my rephrasing of Peterson's question is supposed to apply to theists. You can reword it again to apply to deists or to animists or mystics as the case may be. There's no reason to think one size should fit all here. Still, I don't know that deists believe God's a spirit rather than a person. What would make for that difference?

I agree that the atheism-theism debate changes relatively few minds. I discovered as much when I used to debate on the old Secular Web forum some two decades ago. I write on these things, as on everything else to clarify and to develop my thoughts. It's also a question of understanding why you believe what you believe, and of testing the merit of your beliefs. In other words, it's a matter of doing philosophy.