Dawkins Vs. Hitchens

I don’t think there’s a philosophical disagreement in the capital/no-capital “controversy” among atheists. I think it’s a linguistic one.

Some folks believe that God, like Jesus Christ, is a proper name of a specific fictional character, and therefore should be capitalized whether or not one believes in him, just as you would capitalize Moses or Achilles. Other folks, and I count you and me among them, Hussy, do not believe that god is a proper name, and so should not be capitalized.

Unfortunately, the lower-casing of “god” is viewed as confrontational by religious idiots. I think Dawkins avoids this confrontation because it isn’t important to his thesis. He may also believe that God is the name of a specific mythical character. But I don’t necessarily agree with you that Dawkins is a people-pleaser. I think he’s more of a linguistic traditionalist and sees no point in changing common usage.

On the other hand, Hitchens courts controversy. For him, I think, the lack of capitalization is a linguistic trick, primarily meant to be confrontational.

I can’t speak for Hitchens, but here’s the reason I use the lowercase (I’m quoting from a thread on my own post about this topic): The word “god” is not a proper noun. It’s no one’s name. It would be more reasonable for people to refer to “my god,” rather than just “god.” Certainly, in the former circumstance, every atheist, and most nonatheists, too, would lowercase the word…. In Hebrew, the sky character is referred to using the tetragrammaton — which, roughly transliterated into English is YHVH. That’s Yahweh, or Jahweh, or Yahveh, or Jahveh, even perhaps Jehovah. But it ain’t “God.” That non-name earned its initial cap from the unlettered folk who decided that their own skyguy was the only one. But nobody ever said that it was a proper name. I don’t think it is a proper name, in either sense of the word “proper.” This has nothing to do with my nonbelief, because I scrupulously capitalize Zeus, Thor, Jesus, Ishtar, and all those other deities whose existence I dismiss as nonsense. But “god” stays uncapped when I write it.

I suspect Dawkins’ capitalization of “God” is probably just a habit left over from his Anglican upbringing.

i think people who capitalize god do it in the same way as santa claus — because it indicates the names of a character, if fictional.

i struggled with this for a while when starting my blog. i would tend to not capitalize it, but then i had the urge to write a god, and not use it as a name.

i avoided over the whole dilemma by doing away with caps altogether. and the typing’s quicker, too.

When I speak of god, its the generic god. For me, all those gods are equally ridiculous. So I don’t capitalize unless I am quoting.

“Unfortunately, the lower-casing of “god” is viewed as confrontational by religious idiots.”

I don’t see it as confrontational but I’m on the other side of it. But I suppose I can see it as though. I don’t do it to be confrontational AT ALL. I just do what I think is linguistically accurate.

I didn’t even notice that Dawkins capitalizes the g– word (does he? I should check). I’ve grown used to seeing it that way, I suppose. But my preferred convention is to use the lower case god as a generic term for a deity and the capital God when referring to a specific deity (usually Yahweh, the Mahometan god is always referred to as Allah by westerners).

Dawkins stated during a question and answer period at one of his lectures that the capital ‘g’ was a change made by his editors during the copy editing phase. I wish I could cite the actual video he said this in, but I’ve seen so many I’d never remember which one it was in.

Who knows whether that’s a true excuse. He may have just wanted to avoid a lengthy debate on a subject he considers irrelevant and a waste of time.

Personally, I use the lower-case g in my own writings. I don’t mean for it to be confrontational …though I see why it might be taken that way. I just want to make a point with it. Except when it’s grammatically correct to use the cap G ;-)

I think you should use a capital “G” because it is grammatically correct

I’m just kidding :-)

I think Hitchens does this to piss off religionists–it’s not that he doesn’t believe it refers to a specific fictional deity. I guess that makes him a better atheist in some folks’ books, but not mine. I like how he writes, but this doesn’t serve any real purpose.

It’s a matter of personal choice, and you should do whatever you’re comfortable with–just as Hitchens has. It’s a blog anyway–so who cares?

And a special shout out to ‘exterminator’: lowercasing God is viewed as confrontational by far more than ‘religious idiots.’ I’m neither religious, nor an idiot, but I do see this as patently offensive to religious people. Hussy certainly has the right to do that if she wants–it’s her blog, after all.