I, and many other atheists, have pointed out to theists that they are atheists too.   They simply don’t believe in other gods, often for reasons just like I do: there is no evidence.  They often get upset by this revelation, since it neuters their common attacks on atheists e.g. atheists are those scary communists, etc.

Nothing much new here. I’m just writing responses to various theist since I am desperately bored at work. A month’s shutdown is wearying. There are some fun memes at the end if you want to just scroll down.

Now, unsurprisingly, the Chrisitans who put up this bit don’t allow comments on their website.  As usual, they don’t want anyone actually thinking about what they claim is true and definitely don’t want anyone to think that someone can show them wrong.  (Dave has put up a response to this post that you can read here where I put it in the comments, since he was too afraid of posting it here as a comment and having to deal with responses. He certainly is concerned by how I wrote and manages not to refute my points: https://clubschadenfreude.com/2022/04/05/not-so-polite-dinner-conversation-christians-are-atheists-too/#comment-25327 )

Dave Williams, the Christian making the claims starts with this baseless bit of nonsense “Now, belief in the one true God can only come through revelation as he speaks to you, reveals his true character and causes you to see your need for him.”  Well poof goes free will then.  But, as I know very well, Christians don’t agree whether free will or predestination is a thing and neither side can show their nonsense to the right answer. 

This assumption has nothing to support it.  It assumes that there is only one god, and that Dave’s version is it, as well as that this god talks to anyone.  We can see that claim as being rather doubtful since this god supposedly talks to every Christian per their own claims, and funny how this god gives entirely contradictory information to its “chosen”.  For all of Dave’s claims of “serious logical missteps” he’s already made a few. 

Dave’s claim is that there simply has to be a right version of Christianity. There does not.  I would make the educated guess that Dave would not agree that there must be a right version of Islam, though his argument “that there are many different options does not take away from the potential truth of one” would make Islam with just as much chance of being true as his version of Christianity.  Dave also gets rather confused trying to claim that atheists would not want our conclusion that there are not gods set along side the many claims of theists for their gods.   Since he also claims that there are no gods, in each individual case, other than his god, he has his own no god option.  How is that to be put alongside his god option? 

As usual, the theist has little idea about how logic works.  He does indeed need to show that other gods don’t exist and his does, and proceeds to offer illogical and indeed baseless claims as truth. 

He promptly defines his god as the only possible definition of a god.  He claims a binary choice when there is none.  This is a false dichotomy fallacy e.g. “there being a god or there not being a god.”  There could be many gods, there could be two.  They could work in gestalt, they could each have a function in a process, and on and on.  There is nothing to show that his god is the only god.  That is his baseless premise and thus makes any conclusion from it worthless. 

Dave claims “Now, even at this stage we are not putting all the god options in competition with each other.”  He then promptly says “The discussion is now between people who do believe in God’s existence. The priority now is to make sure that we are talking about the true and living god. The aim is to make sure we know him correctly and worship him properly.”

hmm, where did that other possibility go, that there are no god or gods or that there are multiple gods?  Oh yes, Dave assumes there is a god required.  He also tries to claim that polytheism isn’t really putting up their pantheon against a single god.  Really?  Then why the difference in terms?  These gods are indeed rivals to Dave’s god in their ontological status.  He tries to pretend they aren’t, by insisting that his god alone deserves worship, but he gives no reason why this should be he case.  There may indeed be considered a vague power over these pantheons, but again, why does only Dave’s god deserve worship? 

Dave claims then that this somehow “boils down into one question ““Do you believe in an eternal, personal, loving God who created the World, continues to sustain it?”” and then claims that the only possible answer is that one must.  Funny how that works. 

All of this doesn’t end up leading to Dave’s god, no matter how hard he hopes it does so he can be validated. We still have other gods possible, and there is no problem with worshiping something, no matter if it is “distant and unknowable”.  Dave’s claim “Then, we have in fact denied the eternal and personal God and in practice chosen the atheist option.”  Aka “If you don’t believe in my god, then you are an atheist” Is entirely false. 

The point that Christians are also atheists and disbelieve in other gods, therefore being atheist towards them, still stands. I could wish that the term “pan-atheist” would be accepted for those of us who disbelieve in all gods, but that hasn’t happened yet. So we are stuck with atheism potentially meaning two things, the lack of belief in a god or gods, and the lack of belief in all of them.