Am I Actually a Theist?
God forbid! Well, I shouldn't have thought so, but Auburn University philosopher Roderick Long has me thinking again. Or, to be more precise, he again has me thinking that the theist/atheist dichotomy is false, like so many hoary philosophical dichotomies (e.g., realism versus nominalism), in that it can be transcended or synthesized. (See his paper "God and Human Attitudes: 33 Years Later" .) Long's paper is a look at James Rachels's "God and Human Attitudes" (1971), in which Rachels argued that God by definition would have to be worthy of worship, yet "[n]o being could possibly be a fitting object of worship" because that would require us to subordinate our moral agency and our consciences. Yet, Long argues, medieval Scholastics regarded God as identical with truth, being, and goodness; these were not merely properties that God possessed, they were what God was .... God is something like the logical structure of reality. On this view, the