An atheist is just somebody who feels about Yahweh the way any decent Christian feels about Thor or Baal or the golden calf. 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 popularized this formulation in the mid-2000s while promoting his critique of theism in public debates and in his bestselling book *The God Delusion*. The line is typically used to reframe “atheism” as a modest extension of a stance most monotheists already take toward rival deities: Christians reject Thor, Baal, or other gods without feeling they bear a special burden of proof, and Dawkins argues atheists simply extend that same skepticism to the remaining, culturally dominant god. The phrasing reflects Dawkins’s broader project in this period: challenging the social stigma attached to atheism and presenting disbelief as a normal, intellectually continuous position rather than a radical departure.

The quote argues by analogy: disbelief in one’s “own” god is not categorically different from disbelief in other gods. By pointing out that nearly everyone is already an “atheist” with respect to most deities ever proposed, Dawkins seeks to dissolve the idea that atheism is uniquely extreme or morally suspect. The “one god further” punchline highlights how religious commitment often tracks cultural inheritance rather than uniquely compelling evidence. Philosophically, it shifts the burden from defending atheism as a special claim to explaining why one particular deity should be exempt from the skepticism routinely applied to all others.

1) “We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.”
2) “An atheist is someone who disbelieves in Yahweh just as a Christian disbelieves in Thor, Odin, Baal, or the golden calf.”
3) “We are all atheists about most gods; some of us just take it one god further.”