FYI, that's what some theologians interpret the "and on the seventh day He rested" thing as. An explanation that God is constantly "holding" creation in existence.
It's as good an answer as anything else. It all depends on how powerful you rate the Almighty. I was watching some Supernatural clips (as you inspired me to) and I came across something about how God (Chuck) going off and creating more universes like an author with multiple novels, and just moving on once he has done enough in one. Obviously an analogy, but it makes about as much sense to me as anything else. Personally, the less human or personal God is to me the more it makes sense to me. It's just my perspective but I feel human conversation is incredibly inefficient and primitive in terms of an exchange of information, so I feel I could no more have a human-like conversation with anything that could create a universe than I could converse with gravity or electromagnetism. At least, not in any way that would be all that understandable on a conscious level. Now perhaps I might understand a "response" on a subconscious level but that's harder to work out. All this isn't to say I couldn't attempt to communicate using words, but it seems bizarre that the response would be on the same level. In saying that, that might just be how my brain works. It could be very different for others - I couldn't say for certain without being in their heads.
The grammar nazi in me begs to disagree.
Language is a strange thing. Constantly trying to be constrained yet never submitting. Language inevitably goes the way of the masses no matter how much it is attempted to be restrained. I mean, if the primary goal is communication then the majority will inevitably and naturally decide (without anything like a formal consensus) what works for them and what doesn't. Whatever becomes popular becomes the rule, as it has always been. When Christianity was a stronger force the capitalization of God when referring to the God of Abraham was not merely a rule, but sacred. The "gods" of other religions were deemed to be false, to be demons. This however created a language problem when actually discussing them for academic purposes, as those beings had previously filled the same position in society as the God of the Christians. The Christian monks and members of the church were generally the only ones apart from members of nobility who could read and write, and not only in whatever was the main language of their country but often older languages and languages of other important places (and probably some of the less important places too). These members of the Church often recorded history and translated old texts, and simply always referring to a being as a demon was not always practical. So the distinction was that their God was to be signified as the only God via capitalization (this ensured that it was both clear and made the distinction) and that other beings were false idols, and the lower case denoted that status as pretenders. The Almighty was named God as he was the only God there could be, and all others that claimed that title were false. The Christians were also not the first or the only religion to do it. In fact, similar things happened both in other concurrent religions at the time but also well before the rise of Christendom.
A famous example was the Aten in Ancient Egypt. A Pharaoh in 1300BC called Amenhotep IV decided after a while to not worship the sun god Ra (or any of the other gods), but worship the actual sun itself. He called it Aten and eventually renamed himself Akenaten (Effective Spirit of the Aten) and said it was the only god, and he was of course the living embodiment. There were several reasons for this - not the least of which it depowered the powerful priests of Egypt. Part of his strategy was to attempt to remove the names and images of the previous gods (and he was hardly the only one - just about every story of younger gods overcoming older gods is a reflection of a stronger cult defeating a lesser one, and so the god of the cult that lost was demonised - the god Set is an example of this). After Akenaten's death the priests returned the worship back to the old gods and attempted to remove the images and incorporate the story of the Aten into their own stories.
But to your point - it is only necessary to capitalize when naming a being, and as I pointed out above, when discussing the character The White God (TWG) we don't call him God or god or anything else, in order to keep the distinction between a fantasy series character and the object of religions belief in Christianity (despite however close the similarities are). I believe the Almighty is acceptable terminology as well. As for whether other deities can be capitalized or not it's really a personal choice more than a rule here or otherwise. Not every variant of the English language requires it, not even most. As you pointed out so well, it's all about point of view.
I think it's only obvious that a fictional god or top god would be, literally, almighty if you're coming from a Christian point of view. This view always annoys me in fiction when dealing with a god or gods that are clearly not Christian.
Exactly, unless you bother to explain just why one god from one religion is stronger than another. And often that ends up insulting readers or not making much sense, especially if it's buried in thinly-veiled preachings. Most author's these days are not foolish enough to make much of a definitive statement, unless they are deliberately trying to get a particular message out there. Jim's done alright I think by and large. Some of it does seem a bit skewed, but it's the story he wants to tell. Beyond that, I think he's building an argument (and he has discussed this was his intention) that the beings themselves get interpreted differently depending on who is looking. It doesn't totally work right now as we have only seen Harry's perspective but it's possible by the end things will be much more open to interpretation.
The gods, top or otherwise, of most mythologies aren't almighty. The answer to "what kind of god would allow this" in that sort of system is very easily answered. The kind that doesn't have to power to stop it.
Indeed, even in early Abrahamic writings God wasn't always all-powerful. And if you go by the Problem of Evil argument, you could still make that case.
I agree. The more definitive an author gets about this sort of thing, the more turned off most of the audience gets. It ends up being offensive or disagreeable to a large part of the audience or it's just done poorly. (Like when writers have characters that are "smarter" than the reader, but the reader is always a few steps ahead of the character). The only thing worse than a preachy author is one who's preaching the "wrong" message.
Pretty much. Hopefully Jim will strike a good balance. He mostly does, at least for me. For it to be perfect I would probably have to write it - and that's kinda the point too. Not that I could write anything as good as the Dresden Files.
