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

--Richard Dawkins

For the atheist, such a quip merits a chuckle. For a believer, the same quip elicits degradation and defamation for such an insulting comment (see here for such a criticism: http://www.strangenotions.com/debunking-the-one-god-further-objection/).

Believers probably misunderstand in entirety the point of attack Richard Dawkins' quote levels against the beliefs of theists.

The premise of theists is: the theist disregards many gods without proof to their nonexistence without thinking hard about it or seeing such a dismissal as very consequential.

This quote is to poke fun at such a belief, for such a belief carries a significant premise: gods can be rejected until they have been proven to exist.

The quip does not seek to put every god on the same level, just that the theist has not evaluated every god to even know the levels.

The quip is also not an argument for why god should be rejected, just that the theist has unsupported reasons for rejecting other gods; the atheist has thought these through.

Such cherry-picking of gods by theists deserves ridicule. The monotheist has checked his brain at the door and invited only one god in.

On a related note, I was thinking how people would probably treat me as insane if I espoused belief in the Greek gods (all of them). There could be many advantages over one god (there's more for instance). Lots of competing gods can explain why bad things happen to good people. But such a belief would be treated as foolish and archaic. I fail to see why it is more ludicrous than belief in the Christian god, which is even more archaic.

While I pretend to be a Greek gods worshiper, let me know what you think of the "one god further" quote.