This is truly ridiculous! Student gets F grade for mentioning God, it is said. The atheist professor had prohibited her from using the word in an essay on the role of religion in government. How would this be possible? When you permit a student to write a paper on religion, you should expect to find the word “God” mentioned in it, especially in a country where Christianity is so influential as in the United States. The country is “one nation under God”, they say, so if you want to do an essay on the topic of religion and the government, you’ll have to mention God, period. Besides, would other words, like Supreme Being, Divine, etc. do better? That’s making no sense.
I think this professor is doing a very poor job at separating his role as an atheist from his role as a professor, and furthermore, he’s reinforcing the stereotype of atheists as Christian-haters. I’m not an atheist, but I know many people who are. Some of them are quite suspicious of religion, and Christianity in particular - probably cause that’s the leading religion in their societies -, but they would not be so stupid as to prohibit people from even using the word “God”. It is not grounded on any sort of logic, and yet it makes it seem as if all atheists hate religion and religious people. It’s even having negative effects upon atheists, in the United States, that are already being discriminated against. Now Christians seem to have an argument to do so - that atheists ate discriminating, too. I see this as an unwise decision of this professor’s at best.
