If you have done any amount of dialoguing on the internet, you come across the type of people who make some assertion and act like it’s a revelation that nobody has previously considered. Often these people turn out to be antitheists who throw out canards in an attempt to intellectually justify their unbelief.

One such gambit that has resurfaced in my sphere recently is the “many gods argument,” or the problem of competing religious claims. One form of it goes something like this: Every religion claims their god(s) are the true god(s), therefore all the claims cancel each other out with none being right. Throughout history, there have been thousands, if not millions of gods people have worshipped, so what are the odds that your version is the correct one?

My response goes like this: Every year 32 NFL teams contend that, barring injuries and if everyone plays to their potential, they can win the Super Bowl. Therefore, since 32 teams make this same claim, none can win the Super Bowl. This is both a good analogy and a rather invalid one, but the aspects that make it invalid will ultimately buttress my viewpoint.

First, it’s a valid analogy because it puts the spotlight on a fundamental mistake in logic. If all make the same claim it demonstrates that they can’t all be correct, but it doesn’t prove that none of them is correct. Every year, one of the teams making this claim does if fact win the Super Bowl.

Yet, it’s an invalid analogy because from an odds-making standpoint, not every team has the same likelihood of winning merely because it’s theoretically possible. Determining the likelihood of winning that depends on a host of key factors. How good the team was last year, coaching changes, losses of key players or additions of new ones, health of the team, strength of schedule, etc. In other words, you do an analysis or internal critique of each team.

The methodology for evaluating any particular system of thought for validity is to conduct a test for internal coherence, known as an internal critique. If a certain worldview is internally coherent, that won’t prove it is true, but if it is internally incoherent it must certainly be false. Competing religious claims are validated by the same criteria. Atheism, itself, falls apart rationally when using this standard.

A common statement reverberated by atheists is one made famous by Stephen F. Roberts:

“I contend we are both atheists, I just believe in one less god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.”

To which I respond:

When you understand the reasons that Christians dismiss gods of other religions has virtually nothing to do with why the atheists deny the biblical God, you will understand why I can't be an atheist.

Roberts might have been on firmer comparative ground had he been a Muslim and said he dismissed Yahweh for the name reason a Christian dismisses Allah. In fact, the claim itself is more than a bit presumptuous. While Roberts' statement may team with rhetorical flourish, it isn't even close to being accurate.

In any case, I have a different way of analyzing the multi-god phenomenon. Ancient peoples saw the evidence for God or gods in the revelation of the created order. The problem was that they had immature or underdeveloped concepts of God’s attributes and thus described the divine inaccurately. So, they were right about the supernatural, just inaccurate in codifying what they perceived. The biblical record in Romans chapter three explains the advantage the ancient Hebrews had versus other peoples.

1 What advantage then has the Jew, or what is the profit of circumcision? 2 Much in every way! Chiefly because to them were committed the oracles of God.

What were these oracles? The scriptures, the words of their prophets, along with their oral traditions. On top of the witness of the created order, they had divine revelation as to understanding the attributes of their God. Of course, skeptics will just dismiss this out of hand, but it offers a logical explanation as to the competing religious claims issue. That is, why the God of the Bible is differentiated.

In addition, ancient cultures didn’t necessarily view their pantheons the same way as the Judeo-Christian tradition views Yahweh. In the movie Spartacus, Senator Gracchus comments on the gods: “Privately I believe in none of them – neither do you. Publicly, I believe in them all.” His profession was just about political expedience. Though the Roman Caesars declared that they were divine, do you think anyone thought of them as the Creator of the heavens and earth? In the Greek conception, gods were more like superhumans, having human foibles. We could add to these the preposterous atheist comparisons of God with the Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, The Flying Spaghetti Monster and Santa Claus. Obvious categorical errors, as none of these are remotely analogous to the God of scripture.

For a more exhaustive study, acquire and read the book "Jesus, among other Gods" by Ravi Zacharias.