this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2024
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Showerthoughts
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I know this is just a showerthought, but what do you define as religion? The term religion doesn't necessarily need a God.
Or do you mean the 3 mainstream monotheistic religions? (Christianity, Judaism, Islam)
God with a capital G usually refers to "the" monotheistic God that we understand in those three Abrahamic religions you mentioned. usually you would say "god" otherwise, as it's just a descriptive feature of other religions rather than the name used to call a specific name of "God".
On the internet? In general I take someone that spells "God" with a capital to be a theist (usually only 2 of 3 monotheistic believes, because Muslims usually use "Allah" probably). Or perhaps raised as a theist, lost their faith, but not bitter against their old faith. while if someone uses "god" they are probably not a theist.
Makes sense to me too: I as a theist would refer to "Thor" as a "god" because to me it is not an entity that exists. It would only make sense for someone that is an atheist to not use a capital to refer to my "God": They don't believe it to be a real entity after all.
E: although, I guess fictional characters do use capitals, so maybe I'm wrong.
It has nothing to do with belief(although I'm sure some militant atheists chose to use lowercase universally, they're likely just grammatically ignorant) . It's noun vs descriptor. Abrahamic God (and Muslim doesn't matter either... it's the same entity in all three) is literally it's name. A proper noun. In your example of Thor, god is just a description, not his proper name. But Thor is not a good example as he's actually a demigod, but demigod is never capitalized as there is no god called "Demigod". Odin is the god of war and the dead... and ruler of valhalla as a more accurate entity to discuss.
God is a god. My god is God. Both of these previous sentences are grammatically correct. The Bible itself even makes these distinctions. Example:
John 10:33-36 (KJV):
Other sources agree.
https://www.learnreligions.com/god-or-god-to-capitalize-or-not-to-capitalize-249823
Other examples of the phenomenon... "The other day, Mom cooked with the other moms." You call your mom "Mom" as a proper noun. Where mom is a general descriptor for the other women your mom was cooking with. "Is she your mom" vs "Mom is calling for you".