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It's been going on for some time, but the phenomenon which was once seen as almost an act of rebellion is now becoming more commonplace. God, capitalized, is increasingly seen only at the start of a sentence. Leaving aside whether one believes in a god, or in the Christian God Himself, why is this convention not being criticized?

God is after all a proper noun, the name of a deity which for over 2,000 years we have all heard of, and know by that very name. It matters not that god or God may or may not exist. It is a name. And like any other name that belongs to a real person or a fictional character in a book, it ought to be spelled with a capital letter.

I always feel uncomfortable writing about God with a capital letter, I always feel there is a hoard of die-hard atheists ready to accuse me of being a creationist, god forbid. (Should that have been: "..., God forbid"?)

Is the spelling of the Christian "God" politically incorrect? Is God with a capital letter, grammatically speaking, an archaic tradition? And if so, why?

EDIT: From the answers so far posted, no one has yet mentioned the political and social consequences this deceptively innocent, lowercase spelling may have had on us, on today's society. And this has lead me wondering, whether in the history of the English language there has been anything similar; any linguistic subversion, spoken or written which was in reality a show of defiance toward an established authority such as a government or political leader.

Mari-Lou A
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    If you're going to ask about the Christian God, could you use capital letters in the question title? – Andrew Leach Sep 17 '13 at 10:12
  • It was a provocation, I admit. It looks odd to my eyes, and if I capitalize Christian God, in the title, I think my argument weakens. – Mari-Lou A Sep 17 '13 at 10:17
  • You could legitmately ask "Why is the christian god spelled with uppercase letters?" and cast the question from the other point of view. – Andrew Leach Sep 17 '13 at 10:23
  • @AtsutoNagatomo Ngram, as far as I am aware, Ngram graphs are based on books. There are many hundreds of evangelical books being published continually. My observation is based on real life, on what I read and observe, especially on the Internet. – Mari-Lou A Sep 17 '13 at 10:30
  • @AndrewLeach the problem with your second suggestion, is I know the answer to that question, and it has been asked before on ELU. If you could suggest another way around, or convince me that my question won't be put on hold because it is a duplicate. I'll change the title. I want to avoid confusion, and contradictions. – Mari-Lou A Sep 17 '13 at 10:37
  • When I see *God* I also expect whoever wrote it to capitalise *Him*. I never do so myself for the exact opposite reasons – mplungjan Sep 17 '13 at 12:12
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    I strongly suspect that this is just due to lazy writers. Lots of words are losing their capital letters as people don't bother hitting the shift key unless they really need to. Do you have evidence that this phenomenon is increasing in frequency? I certainly don't recall reading a piece of formal writing, not written by an atheist making a point about religion, where God is intentionally not capitalized where it would otherwise be. It is, as you say, a proper name or title which should be capitalized at least for disambiguation. – Mr. Shiny and New 安宇 Sep 17 '13 at 13:24
  • This is not only a case of laziness, which is a contributing factor, but also a form of statement. By writing god they are making the point they are atheists. It is a type of code, and it's very common in forums. Much less so in newspaper articles, I would have to do some research. I doubt the spelling convention exists in any printed book; but I could check up on Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkin's books. I highly doubt it, though. – Mari-Lou A Sep 17 '13 at 13:43
  • @Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 On page 64, "Augustine was a self-centred fantasist an earth-centred ignoramus: he was guiltily convinced that god cared about his trivial theft from some unimportant pear trees...." page 67, " ...such as Nietzche's histrionic and self-contradictory pronouncement that god was dead." From the book GOD IS NOT GREAT by Christopher Hitchens. When Hitchens writes God with a capital letter it is always within quotation marks. – Mari-Lou A Sep 17 '13 at 14:01
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    I'm not convinced that only atheists don't capitalize "god" but maybe also the less devout. I agree that it's a statement by that writer to communicate the degree of importance they assign to the deity. – Kristina Lopez Sep 17 '13 at 16:31
  • Political and social consequences? Really? It seems like a fairly small detail to me. –  Sep 17 '13 at 22:49
  • @snailboat A small detail perhaps, but I believe it is a significant one. The world is changing, and this is reflected in our speech and in our writing. – Mari-Lou A Sep 17 '13 at 22:52
  • @snailboat But you do care about your language. How you write and express your ideas and thoughts matters to you, and it matters that you follow the conventions of style, syntax the silent, internalized rules which dictate to you, whether a phrase is grammatical or not. Thus it should matter if a proper noun is capitalized or not. If it doesn't matter, then you should be coherent and not capitalize any names, any proper nouns. Any way, I am not looking for a fight. The small phenomenon of God being spelled with a lowercase letter has always intrigued me for years. – Mari-Lou A Sep 17 '13 at 23:37
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    I think you have to demonstrate a lot more solid evidence for your claims before I will feel that this question isn't just peeving. Show me the data that demonstrates that the Christian 'God' is trending to 'god', and then show me the data that demonstrates that this is some kind of atheist plot against Christians. And lastly, if you know the reasons why it is spelled with a capital letter, then you know the reasons you ought not care if a hoard of die-hard atheists pounces on you for being orthographically correct. – Kit Z. Fox Sep 17 '13 at 23:50
  • @KitFox I cannot show you the data that there is a trend. I doubt if such a data exists, but are you denying that it happens? You are right about one thing, I shouldn't care if total strangers, atheists or non, pounce on me for expressing an idea, an opinion about wider issues other than how a word is spelled (or spelt, finally! I get to write "spelt" I've been holding back for 13 hours now.) :) – Mari-Lou A Sep 18 '13 at 00:05
  • I don't think the phenomenon exists. 2) I don't see how you can show it except by laborious text research 3) Even if it does exist you're asking for an explanation, which is obvious (making lowercase makes it not a proper noun) 4) that phenomenon happens all the time with proper names used as generics: Kleenex-> kleenex, Google-> google.
    • – Mitch Sep 18 '13 at 13:12
  • Which is all to say that your explicit questions "Is the spelling of the Christian "God" politically incorrect? Is God with a capital letter, grammatically speaking, an archaic tradition? And if so, why?" are not about English language and orthography but about..those topics. There might be a reasonable answer better found at christianity.SE. – Mitch Sep 18 '13 at 13:14
  • @Mitch I paid a visit or two at the Christianity.SE site and it wasn't for me. I was curious to know if anybody else on ELU had noted this decline and what they thought about it. The capitalization of the pronouns; Him, He and Himself was standard usage even in non-religious texts. Today that usage is becoming increasingly rarer. These points I consider belonging pertinently to English Language and Usage, I thought it might have started an interesting discussion. My fault, I phrased and presented my question poorly. It happens. – Mari-Lou A Sep 22 '13 at 19:11
  • @Mari-LouA: Oh. Well, then maybe a rewording about the trend might make this re-openable. Now that you mention it, it is very noticeable when Him and He are used, which makes me think they may not be used as much any more. But that's not the same as 'God'. – Mitch Sep 22 '13 at 23:51
  • @Mari-LouA Hitchens was an atheist making a point about religion. I admit that in those circles there is definitely a tendency to use lowercase letters where Christians feel that respect demands uppercase letters. – Mr. Shiny and New 安宇 Sep 24 '13 at 02:03
  • @Mitch Please, if you believe the question can be opened by rewording it, feel free to edit. As for the declining custom to capitalize the pronouns related to God, isn't that a consequence of using the lowercase letter g? The growing number of (ex)Christians who are either atheists or class themselves as being spiritual reflect the tendency to regard God as just being a god among many different deities. – Mari-Lou A Sep 24 '13 at 03:03
  • Speculatively speaking, I'd say this trend first began in the UK; and became noticeable in the late 80s. (The US has a far higher percent of practising Christians and Protestants which might explain why some users on ELU contested that such a phenomenon existed). – Mari-Lou A Sep 24 '13 at 03:04
  • @Mari-LouA: "if you believe the question can be opened by rewording it, feel free to edit." What? It's your question! You're the one who knows what you want. – Mitch Sep 24 '13 at 12:44
  • @Mari-LouA: "As for...the pronouns related to God, isn't that a consequence of using the lowercase letter g?" Maybe but you asked about 'God' in particular, not about pronouns, which happen to be different things. Also, you didn't mention pronouns, so how would we know to answer about that? – Mitch Sep 24 '13 at 12:48
  • @Mitch I was suggesting that someone like yourself could do a better job, it sounded you were interested. My mistake. I realize the question is/was unpopular, the down votes is proof enough but I do know one thing, it is not a duplicate. My question is quite a bit different from the one proposed by the community. I do not want to get into a discussion over this. I accept the community's decision. – Mari-Lou A Sep 24 '13 at 12:51
  • In reply to your observation that I did not ask about using capitalizing pronouns, that's true. I hadn't thought about it until I read somebody's comment or answer, I forget whose. But it's often the case that answers to a question can reveal aspects of the language that we may have overlooked, taken for granted or perhaps we had forgotten about. – Mari-Lou A Sep 24 '13 at 12:56