God or god?

A quick treatise on capitalization: You’ll sometimes see the word “god” capitalized on this site, which some may see as a tacit acknowledgement of His existence. (Nope, sorry.)

There are two ways to use the word god: First, as a regular noun, i.e. this god or that god, and second as a proper noun, as in the star of the Bible.

When I refer to God-with-a-capital-G, that’s the guy I mean. Rather than go through all the possible names—Yaweh, Elohim, יהווה, Jealous, etc.—I’ll use the one everyone knows.

Why capitalized? Well, the way I see it—and I have to warn the religious people, this next part of this sentence might be a bit heavy, if not downright offensive—God is a character in a book, and I capitalize His name just as I would any other fictional character, be it Ebenezer Scrooge, Jack Ryan, Miss Eleanor Dashwood, Roy Lanchester, or Jesus Christ.

What about capitalizing He and His? Well, I do that (sometimes) because I’m a writer with an artistic bent, and I think it’s a quant custom and it looks cool.

Why do I refer to God as a Him? I defer to George Carlin (video, text): “If there is a god, it has to be a man. No woman could or would ever f**k things up this badly.”