One thing that really irritates me in discussions and debates between theists and atheists, of which both sides are often guilty, is the quibbling about whether or not the word "god" should be spelled with a capital G. Although it's irrelevant to the actual matters under discussion, it often generates a lot of heat. Many atheists insist on spelling it with a lower-case g as a mark of disrespect or as a way of belittling the name of a character that they believe is not real. On the other hand, many Christians (the brand of theist with which I am most familiar) often get really heated over insisting that the word be spelled with a capital G because it is the name of their deity and thus should be respected.In my not-so-humble opinion, both sides are wrong.
I often use the word "god" with a lower-case g when I am talking about deities, whether singular or plural. I do so not out of disrespect or a desire to belittle the object of the word, but because that is its proper usage. "God" is not a proper noun, a personal name. It is a common noun.
Even in modern editions of the Greek New Testament, the word for god, θεος (theos) is not capitalised, whereas personal names are. In the original Greek, the deity is often referred to as "the god" in the passages in which "God" is used in English translations. The word "God" is not used as a name, but rather to refer to "the god" who has a name that is deliberately not used because of an ancient Jewish tradition that it is too holy to be uttered. That name in Hebrew is יהוה (YHVH), which has been given various English pronunciations (Jehovah, Yahweh, Yahoo, Yahveh). It's a fact that many, possibly even most, Christians don't know the name of their own god. They think "God" is a name. It is not, any more than my name is "Man".
So when I am in conversations with Christians and I use terms such as "your god" or "the god of the Bible", I am not stubbornly refusing to capitalise the word out if disrespect. I am simply using the word correctly. On the occasions where I use the word "God" as a proper noun, in accordance with common usage, I capitalise it, but otherwise I do not.
Yes, this is a side-note to the real debate, a pointless grammatical rabbit-trail that leads away from the important issues, but for some reason it really irritates me.
2 comments:
I appreciate your point and the conflict, and you know *my* (inelegant) solution to the problem that tries to respect both sides. To me (granted, as a theist) it isn’t that I capitalize the term because I think it is a proper name (I know it isn’t); but it is like the difference between talking about “truth” (the generic term), and “Truth” (the Platonic ideal of truth). In English we do talk about “Truth with a capitol T” or “Love with a capital L” or “Freedom with a capitol F” – the idealized version of the generic concept. So to me YHWH is “God with a capital G”.
HOWEVER, I recognize that many people, particularly my atheist friends, I don’t think YHWH even exists, much less is some exemplar of the concept of god (many think YHWH would be a rather poor example), and I try to respect that my own view is not universal without betraying what I do believe.
Obviously, that was meant to read:
"I recognize that many people, particularly my atheist friends, don’t think YHWH even exists"
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