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[2ndAmForComputers]

This message was self-deleted by its author (2ndAmForComputers) on Sat Mar 3, 2012, 02:07 PM. When the original post in a discussion thread is self-deleted, the entire discussion thread is automatically locked so new replies cannot be posted.

[niyad]

1. so when I say Goddess is coming, and is She pissed, that would meet with your approval?

or will you refer to that as stupid ?

[2ndAmForComputers]

2. Oooooooo, you followed me here!

How cute. Bless your heart.

[niyad]

4. you didn't answer my question. but then,that isn't surprising.

[Angry Dragon]

3. There are so many gods out there how is one to know

which one they are referring to without a proper name??
And 'God' is not a proper name, it is a cop out

There are three gods in the Bible. How is one to know which one is referred to??

[msongs]

5. the god of the bible, do you refer to the jewish god or the xtian one? nt

[intaglio]

6. Actually, you are wrong

The name of "God" for Christians is Jesus and Jesus Christ ("Yahweh protects" and "The Annointed&quot , and Elohim or or Abba (Father) or El Shaddai or Yhwh or Adonai (Lord) are used. Jews cannot use the first couple of these but the rest are, of course, Jewish in origin.

If you were a Sikh then Satnam, Waheguru or Nirankar is the name. Hindu? there are many names for the one, assuming you follow the tradition that all of the gods are aspects of the one - Sirhasranama means exactly that. A similar condition applies to the Zoroastrians and the Parsi.

Muslims use not only Allah (The god) but also Ar-Rahim and, for some Turks, Tan.

In practise the use of the capitalised names of god is merely a respectful convention, just as capitalising "Lord" in "Lord Snooty" is convention. God itself is merely a descriptive and there is no need to capitalise it, especially when you think it describes nothing.

[dmallind]

12. No.

The name of "God" is not exclusively "Jesus" for Christians, who almost all posit a triune deity named, in English, "God" - of whom Jesus is merely one aspect. That's like saying to Hindus "Shiva" is the only real name of their god.

[intaglio]

19. You did not read my post

Jesus and Jesus Christ are two of the names of the christian god and do not exclude the other names that I gave. God is not the name of the monotheist god, it is but a description like "human" or "bacterium" and there is no need to capitalise it.

Magical thinking may insist that you capitalise any word associated with your particular deity to show proper respect but I do not have to show such respect as I do not have that particular faith and what is more I rather doubt that any deity worthy of respect would give a damn about capitalisation.

[dmallind]

22. Of course I fucking read it - it was and is wrong.

"My" Deity? Talk about not reading worth shit

[intaglio]

23. My mistake

I thought you were Christian because part of being Christian is accepting that Jesus is one element of the unitary and tripartite deity of Christianity and says so in every catechism of every Christian church. If you do not accept this than your deity is not the Christian deity; it is is your deity.

In the same way the god talked about by Islam is not the same deity as the deity of the Christians because Jesus is not part of that deity, only a prophet. The unitary deity of the Hindu faiths is not the deity of the Abrahamic faiths as the Hindu deity shows itself in a multiplicity of forms, many apparently in conflict with each other. Traditionalist followers of Shinto would deny that your deity is their deity, as would the Jains, the Parsi and the ancestor worshippers of the Mongols.

Therefore "your deity" even if you are Christian

[Humanist_Activist]

7. Actually, the proper name is Yahweh, not god...

just like we don't capitalize gods, but do capitalize Zeus or Odin.

[laconicsax]

8. It really isn't, and never was.

The tetragrammaton, YHWH, is supposed to represent the ineffable name of the Abrahamic god. Since it usually appeared with place-holder vowels indicating one of a couple different words were to be spoken in its place, some idiots took the whole thing literally and decided that the proper pronunciation of the tetragrammaton was "Yahweh," based on the vowel points indicating that "Adonai" (meaning "my lord&quot was to be substituted.

So you see, even if the tetragrammaton was meant to be pronounced "Yahweh" (and it probably wasn't), the letters weren't meant to spell the name in the first place.

[Humanist_Activist]

24. Technically you are correct, but its the closest to a proper name in the Bible...

whether the anglicized version is correct or not is relatively moot at this point. All other names in the Bible are technically titles, of course, one, El, is also a proper name, but it changed to mean generic "god" later in the Bible. It was the name of the head deity of the Canaanite Pantheon.

[OriginalGeek]

28. Bureaucrat Conrad, you are technically correct -- the best kind of correct

[laconicsax]

29. You might as well start saying that "the President" is close enough to a proper name for Obama.

A title or description is not a proper name. Claiming otherwise is fatuous.

"President of the United States" isn't Obama's proper name.
"The Administrator" isn't Skinner's proper name (technically, "Skinner" isn't either).
"Steaming pile of shit" isn't OxyRush's proper name.
"Yahweh" isn't the Abrahamic god's proper name.

[muriel_volestrangler]

9. Meh - I do it sometimes

Certainly, when a discussion is not specifically about the typical definition of the deity of Judaism or Christianity (if it were specifically about Islam, I'd say 'Allah'), but instead about a general theistic, or deistic, god, I'll say "you say that god did ...". And frequently, the discussion here are being made by people who say a lot of the bible is not to be taken literally, and so they have moved the topic away from the mainstream organised religious definitions.

And I'll like to throw in some plurals too, because once we've gone away from a revealed god in a book, no-one can show that there's only one entity behind whatever they are arguing.

[mr blur]

10. It isn't a proper name

It's a noun.

[MarkCharles]

26. Well stated, and much more...

succinctly than I stated below in a post I wrote 3 minutes ago without reading yours.

[dmallind]

11. True but the believers get all poutragy even if used correctly

"The god of the Bible" is correct, for example. Here the generic noun god is being modified to add the one referred to in the Bible.

"Your god" is similarly correct, but I've seen people get huffy at both. Big G God is correct in the (rather sad as he actually has a name or two in the Bible) English language proper name usage, and that's all.

[Jokerman]

13. "Refusing to capitalize the word "God" when referring to the Abrahamic god."

Looks to me like you failed to capitalize the word "god" at the end of your first sentence.

If anything is a proper name it would be "Abrahamic God", standing alone the word "god" is a noun, not a proper name.

I'm guessing that by your standard "gawd" is right out and that's a pity. I find the mocking tone to be appropriate in certain settings.

[dmallind]

14. That last god is a noun not a name

There are Norse gods, Greek gods, the newest god, the oldest god and the Abrahamic god.

[pokerfan]

15. It depends on usage: common noun vs proper noun

When the noun god is used generically or in reference to a non-Biblical god, it is not capitalized.

http://grammarist.com/style/god-capitalization/

Nice bit of bigotry there, I might add, but the point remains. When one is referring to god in general, it is not capitalized.

[Warren Stupidity]

16. Those despicable atheists. They will burn in hell as sure as your god exists.

[snooper2]

17. I do it on purpose...change has to start somewhere..

[edhopper]

18. I usually do

but sometimes I miss the Caps key. Big Fucking Deal.
Is God offended by a typo?
Are people of faith so thin skinned and their god so weak that a capitol G is something to be upset about?
"Foolish consistency is the hobgoblins of little minds."

[EvilAL]

20. That's it?

That's pretty lame, not liking a group of people because they spell the word god without capital letters.

Any other things you don't like about me or other atheists? I'd really love to hear them, hopefully they got a little more bite than grammar bullshit.

[rexcat]

21. As an atheist...

don't hold your breath for me to cap the "g" just like I won't cap the "r" in republican. If you find my posts disrespectful alert the post and see how far that gets you with the jury system on DU3!

[MarkCharles]

25. +1000 !!! And here's why

The difference between a proper noun and a common noun has to do with specificity.

If I say I live in a white house, I am being grammatically correct. There are millions of white houses in the USA, (I would guess), but there is only one "White House"

The same can be said of gods. There are perhaps not millions but definitely hundreds of gods in recorded history, and in current day religious thoughts, there are more than one. Christians and Jewish folks have a god that they choose to name as a proper noun, with a capital letter g. Muslims, and other faiths use other names for their god, and choose to name him/her with a capital letter at the beginning of their name of their god.

If there were only one god, like there is only one White House, we could agree to use the capital letter. But since that cannot be shown, since, actually, no one can locate, describe, photograph, or draw an accurate picture, since no one can smell, taste, touch, see, nor hear that one god, we are perfectly accurate in our use of the English language in not using a capital letter. If we were speaking and writing in German, the rules for nouns and capitalization are different. In German, all nominal nouns are capitalized, so proper German uses the word "Gott" at all times.

There is only one White House, even though I live in a white house. If there were only one god, we would agree to the use of a capital letter at the beginning of that word.

[OriginalGeek]

27. I sometimes do, i sometimes don't

I'm not as rebellious as I am a lazy typist.

[MineralMan]

30. I generally use the word deity, rather than god.

God in itself is not a proper noun, and needn't be capitalized. For example, when discussing naturalistic religions, referring to the "god of a tree" one needn't capitalize the word. The plural form, "gods" is never capitalized.

For me, the various and sundry deities worshiped by humans, and there are thousands of them, all represent the same primitive need for explanations of things that cannot be explained by the understanding of those humans. All gods are the same thing. The Judeo-Christian god is no different. If adherents to a religion wish to capitalize the word, they're welcome to do so, but it's not necessary. It's just a habit.

On the other hand, where a deity, as in many polytheistic religions, has a name, that name should be capitalized, as in Vishnu. The word "god" is not a name, it is a description of characteristics attributed to deities. The Judeo-Christian god has a number of different names, actually, depending on who is writing. Those should be capitalized, as in Jehovah or Elohim.

And so that's what I'll be doing, as I have done for a very long time. You are free to do as you please.

[MineralMan]

31. You know, threats don't work...really they don't.

You wrote:

(Oh, and before you ask, no, I don't do the "reverent pronoun" thing, for exactly the same reasons. I write "In the Bible, God says vengeance belongs to him.&quot

You really don't understand atheism, do you? That thread is a hollow one to atheists. We're not frightened by the "vengeance" of deities we don't believe exist. Some of us do worry about the followers of those deities, but the deities can't do anything, because there are no deities.

What you wrote is cosmically stupid.

[2ndAmForComputers]

32. Screw that.

Tired of nobody getting it. Really, screw that.