Richard Dawkins said it. Plenty of atheists have said it, and bloggers (like Cynical C) reproduce it. It’s the claim that atheists are just like Christians who go one god further. Here’s the claim:

We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.

Now, philosophers know that whatever else he may be highly qualified in, Dawkins is not a philosopher. He also appears to occasionally struggle with the English language. Atheism is disbelief an any god. It’s not just disbelief in one particular god.

If I didn’t believe that you owned a blue Ford Mustang, I couldn’t call myself an acarian (a person who believes there are no cars). It would make no sense at all to say “I’m an acarian when it comes to your car.” Just unpack that a little – “When it comes to your car, I believe that no cars at all exist, anywhere.” That scarcely even makes sense!

Sorry to take your little rhetorical trick away, Dr Dawkins (well OK I’m not really), but Christians are not atheists with respect to any gods. They just don’t believe in Vishnu, Kali, etc. We are theists when it comes to each and every one of those other gods, even if we don’t believe in that particular god.

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Modern philosophy of religion has ably defended Classical theism against the traditional ‘problem of evil.’ The final and insurmountable blow, however, will undoubtedly be the formidable question of why an all powerful good God would allow the existence of Internet Explorer. Indeed, the ‘problem of Internet Explorer’ may be the death-knell of theism as we know it.

This message has been brought to you by my recent coding attempts.

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