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Q&A Is it acceptable to use words like "heaven" and "god" when the narrator is agnostic?

The main character, and the person whose viewpoint the story is told from, is a scientist and subscribes to agnosticism. And there are sentences in my story like: "Trees stretched into the sk...

6 answers  ·  posted 6y ago by SealBoi‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T09:04:20Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/36835
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by user avatar SealBoi‭ · 2019-12-08T09:04:20Z (almost 5 years ago)
The main character, and the person whose viewpoint the story is told from, is a scientist and subscribes to agnosticism.

And there are sentences in my story like:

> "Trees stretched into the sky forever, like the stilts of heaven."\*

Is this acceptable? I know that heaven can mean "a very enjoyable or desirable scenario", but in that sentence it is clear he is referring to the religious location.

Even if that's okay, there are other sentences in the story, like:

> "A cool breeze whispered by my ear, like the voice of a kindly god."\*

The character is American, a country with a Christian majority, so it's at least clear that he is not referring to God himself, because of the use of the indefinite article and lower-case "g", but a god is still a god.

Perhaps this doesn't matter as much because he's using the word "god" in a simile, but I'd still like to hear your views on this.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2018-06-11T09:41:33Z (over 6 years ago)
Original score: 36