Occasionally, I become embarrassed when speaking or writing of God in philosophy. “Embarrassment” is the best term I can think of although it is far from ordinary embarrassment. It is an embarrassment of being extraordinarily disrespectful.

This experience was especially acute when I was actively teaching. Sometimes in a presentation of arguments for and against the existence of God, I had a vivid sense of God being present while we deliberately ignored Him to speculate whether He was present. How could we show greater disrespect?

I am not blessed by always sensing the presence of God. (I always sense the presence of the moral authority.) But when I sense the presence of God and I am speaking or writing philosophically about God I have a problem.

This embarrassment of speaking of God in His presence while ignoring His presence occasionally afflicts me while writing posts on divine command morality. This is why I wrote in Authoritarian Morality as Divine Command Morality that I prefer speaking rarely of God in my development of divine command morality.

I write of God being the moral authority in my theory of authoritarian morality. I write of the moral authority being God because theoretical considerations require the moral authority to have features which make it God-like. While writing I pay no attention to God who is present. But I do pay attention to God because I recognize His presence. But sense that I am ignoring Him

How can a believing philosopher speak of God philosophically without being disrespectful? In philosophy, we speak of the office of being God, we do not speak of God to whom we refer in prayer or theology. The One to whom we pray actually occupies the office whose functions and powers we always inadequately represent.

The office of God is not God. The office of God is a conceptual construct in philosophical discussion. To think of this conceptual construct as God is moving toward idolatry.

However, it is very easy to regard our concept of God as God to whom we can refer since we use the same word for both. Even atheists succumb to the temptation to regard a concept of God as God. An atheist might think that we can show that we cannot refer to God because there are good reasons for holding that a specific concept of God could not be of something to which we could refer.

I try to avoid drifting towards the idolatry of regarding the moral authority in my divine command moral theory by frequently using the term “moral authority” instead of “God.”