We are all atheists about most of the gods humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further. — Richard Dawkins

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

Author: Richard Dawkins

Insight: Most of us have already rejected thousands of gods without a second thought. The Egyptian pantheon, the Norse gods, the spirits that ancient cultures swore shaped their daily lives—we dismiss these as mythology without hesitation. We don't lose sleep wondering if Ra might be real, or feel guilty for not believing in Thor. We're completely comfortable saying those believers were mistaken, confused by their culture or the limits of their time. The uncomfortable part of this quote is that it asks: why does that same reasoning stop somewhere? If we've already discarded 99.9 percent of humanity's proposed deities, what makes us certain we've found the right one—or any at all? It's not really an attack on faith so much as a mirror. It points out that everyone reading this is already an atheist in the practical sense, just with different boundaries. A Christian is an atheist about Allah in the way a Muslim is an atheist about Jesus, the way we all are about Poseidon. This doesn't settle whether god exists or doesn't. But it does suggest that skepticism isn't some fringe position—it's what we already do most of the time. The real question is whether our reasons for stopping where we do hold up to the same scrutiny we'd naturally apply to someone else's faith.

Source: The Root of All Evil?, Part 1 (television documentary), 2006