this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2026
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Some religious people still have a problem with that, but this explanation seems to work for me.
Me: "Do you believe in Ra, the sun god?"
Them: "No"
Me: "Do you believe in Zeus?"
Them: "No"
Me: "What about Odin, or Quetzacotl, or Shiva?"
Them: "No, I only believe in the one true god who--"
Me: "So, you're basically almost as much of an Athiest as me. Throughout history there have been many cultures who have believed in their gods. You don't believe in any of those gods, and neither do I. The only difference is that there's one god that you believe in that I don't. You're 99.9% towards being fully Athiest, you just have one remaining god that you still believe in."
This also helps when they start giving reasons for why what they believe is real because it's in their bible. You can ask if they've read all the holy books of the Aztecs or the Hindus. Why would their holy book be true and not those other holy books? If we're going to say something is true because it's in a holy book, then you also have to believe the books that talk about Thor and Odin. If they start saying that everything around was created by god, again, which god? The Hindus have a story for how their various gods created everything, so do the Egyptians. Basically every religion has that story. It's also useful to ask them what they'd believe if they'd grown up in India, or in ancient Egypt or in Denmark 1000 years ago since almost everybody gets their religion from their upbringing.
I think that's completely missing the point of people's faith lmao.
What point is that, laughing your ass off?
Well that faith is primarily based on the belief that there ought to be a god, in order to explain the world in all its beauty, complexity, anthropocentricity or something like that. It's just that their particular variety of religion seems to them the most plausible description of what said deity might be like, which isn't incompatible with other, less plausible and outdated, ideas of God existing. Even if the plausibility of one's religious views can be brought into question, it doesn't really address the presumed need for a deity to exist in order to explain the world for what it is.
They're saying "There ought to be no gods other than the one I believe in", despite the fact that other people believe in other gods. They think that those people are delusional and believe in a god that isn't there, but that they're perfectly reasonable to believe in theirs. They think it's absolutely absurd to think that Lord Vishnu had a flower growing out of his navel which he separated into three parts, creating the earth from one of them. But, they think it's perfectly reasonable that Elohim created the heavens and the earth in six days.
Not only that, but they don't even believe that this "Lord Vishnu" exists. It's not that the Hindus got the story wrong and that he was just standing off to the side while Elohim did the work, they think that Hindus are suckers for thinking that he even exists, and that it's only their god that exists.
If there's a presumed need for a deity to exist to explain the world (which is absurd), then why restrict it to just one deity? Many believers throughout time have believed that there are many gods, just that theirs are the strongest. But, modern monotheists somehow believe that it's a fantasy that other gods exist, but not that theirs exists.
I really feel like that's a misrepresentation, though admittedly I don't have the data to back it up. To say any theist believes any other theist from another denomination is delusional just seems absurdly reductive.
And maybe it didn't come across in my other comment, but to think of faith as some ontological disagreement on which particular version of gods do or don't exist I think misses the point entirely. Seems rather more like an epistemic disagreement on what we believe this transcendent power to be, which theists are in agreement on regarding its existence. Most theists don't believe their religious texts to be literal anyways, it's different stories about the same transcendent power, being religious doesn't mean lacking any and all nuance or historical understanding. That hasn't been my experience with religious people at least :)
This was my reasoning for a while, I believed in all gods equally and that amount was zero. I still believe in them all equally, that amount just isn't zero anymore.
That's the common Ricky Gervais answer. I find it easier to just say "No." If they want to take it further, I walk away.