Many atheists try to describe their position in a manner that makes it more appealing to theists. They will say things like, “You’re an atheist with respect to Zeus, Poseidon, Jupiter, etc. which means you’re an atheist like me! It’s just that I believe in one less god than you.”
In a debate with an atheist, Dr. David Wood provided a good response to this oft-repeated refrain.
There’s a world of difference between one and none. Here’s a podium. Let’s suppose we try to understand how this podium got here. Some of you believe that many people got together and built the podium and that would be poly-podium-builderism. And others say ‘no, one good podium builder and that’s it.’ We call that mono-podium-builderism. And then you’ve got the atheist who says, ‘there was no podium builder; the podium just is.’ And we say, ‘well that’s absurd’ and the response from the atheist it seems is, ‘well you rejected all those other podium builders, I just went one more than you.’ Yeah, but we were already down to one and in going from one to zero, you go from commonsense to nonsense.
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Reference
Acts17Apologetics, "'Does God Exist?' David Wood vs. Michael Shermer (Christian vs. Atheist Debate)," October 30, 2016, YouTube video, 2:23:42, https://youtu.be/PMWKm40-dnM?t=2886.
Timestamp: 48:06 - 48:54
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