In a YouTube short (Ricky Gervais Debunked) posted by Alex O’Connor, he criticizes Ricky Gervais’s use, on Stephen Colbert’s show, of what I call the ‘just one more god’ argument. Gervais is an atheist and Colbert is a Catholic. The idea is that humanity has posited thousands of gods, all but one of which Colbert rejects. Gervais rejects all of the gods that Colbert rejects but adds just one more: the Catholic God in which Colbert believes.

O’Connor shows a short clip of that part of the Colbert/Gervais conversation, which goes like this:

Gervais:

So you believe in one God, I assume.

Colbert:

Uhhh, in three persons, but go ahead.

Gervais:

Okay, so you believe– okay. But there are 3,000 to choose from, you know, of people —

Colbert:

I’ve done some reading, yeah.

Gervais:

So basically, you believe in– you deny one less god than I do. You don’t believe in 2,999 gods, and I don’t believe in just one more.

O’Connor tries a reductio ad absurdum:

Which I think is the most, like, unthinking thing that you can say about the issue of God’s existence. Imagine you were sat around with your ten brothers and none of you had ever met your father, and you were discussing “What do you think our father was like?” One of your brothers says “Well, you know, I think he might have been French.” And someone says “No, no, no, I’m sure he was American. If you look at the kind of man that Mum’s into, I’m sure he might have been American.” And, you know, the next brother thinks he’s Italian, and the next brother thinks that he’s German, and it gets round to me and I say “You know what, guys? I don’t think we had a dad.”

And they’re like, “What? Of course you had a bloody dad. What are you talking about?” [I reply] “Oh, hold on, guys. Like, you don’t believe in the French dad, and the American dad, and the German dad. You don’t believe in any of those dads. I just go one dad further.”

I think you’re making a mistake there… Notice that there’s a huge difference between, say, the difference between ten and eleven, or the difference between five and six, and the difference between zero and one. It’s a difference of quality rather than just quantity.

He’s being unfair to Gervais. If you watch the full Gervais/Colbert segment and not just the part that O’Connor excerpted, it’s clear that Gervais isn’t trying to justify atheism, he’s just explaining it. Here’s the lead-up to the part I quoted above:

Gervais:

I’m an agnostic atheist, technically. ‘Agnostic’ means no one knows whether there’s a God. So everyone’s technically an agnostic. We don’t know.

Colbert:

That’s true.

Gervais:

An agnostic atheist is someone who doesn’t know whether there’s a God or not, as no one does.

Colbert:

So you’re not convicted of your atheism.

Gervais:

Well, I am. No, I am. Atheism is only rejecting the claim that there is a God. Atheism isn’t a belief system. Atheism– so this is atheism in a nutshell. You say, “There’s a God.” I say, “Can you prove that?” You say, “No.” I say, “I don’t believe you then.”

Then Gervais presents the ‘just one more god’ argument. To me, it’s clear that he doesn’t think it disproves the existence of God. He’s just explaining atheism and pointing out that Colbert is an atheist with respect to thousands of gods, while he is an atheist with respect to just one more.

When I use that argument, I use it to invite the believer to apply the same skepticism to their own religious beliefs as they do to the religious beliefs of others. If a Muslim tries to convert a Christian, the Christian will presumably demand evidence that Islam is right and Christianity is wrong. Without such evidence, the Christian won’t be persuaded. That same standard should be applied to their own Christian beliefs, and in my experience, that rarely happens. For most people, their religious beliefs are the default, and evidence is only required when they are asked to change those beliefs.

O’Connor is right that ‘just one more god’ would be a poor argument against God’s existence, but that isn’t what Gervais (or I) use it for.