This is part 3 of a critique of The Atheist Who Didn’t Exist: The Dreadful Consequences of Bad Arguments (2015) by Andy Bannister (part 1 here). The book promises to critique a number of atheist arguments.
Chapter 3: The Aardvark in the Artichokes
In today’s episode, Fred is furious because something destroyed his garden. He’s considering and dismissing possible culprits—from aardvarks to zebras—while our hero points out the clues for rabbits. Fred says that it’s not rabbits, either. You’ve dismissed all those other animals? Well, he just goes one animal further.
This is obviously supposed to mimic the atheist argument used by Richard Dawkins and others that the Christian rejects hundreds or thousands of gods; why not just one god further like the atheist?
Bannister’s harsh critique: “To describe this as a bad argument is to flirt somewhat casually with understatement.”
Game on!
(I’ve responded to this argument in another post, but this chapter has some new ideas that I’d like to respond to.)
Examples to illustrate the error
Bannister lists several examples to illustrate the problem.

• The atheist says, “You’re an atheist with respect to every other religions’ god(s)” and then goes on to disbelieve that final one. Similarly, a married man can be a bachelor with respect every other woman in the world. Would it make sense to disbelieve that final one, his wife? This isn’t analogous. This is exists vs. married to—hardly the same thing. The existence of women isn’t the question when we’re talking about bachelorhood.
• He imagines Col. Mustard in the game Clue saying, “All the other characters are innocent! You should go one character more and let me go as well.” The rules say there is exactly one murderer. And we understand murders in real life—there must be one or more murderers. Zero is not an option. Contrast that with the number of gods that exist, which could be zero.
• He imagines a biologist saying that he rejects evolution because he’s rejected all the other explanations and has just gone “one theorem further.” If the scientist has reasons to reject evolution, no problem. It’s possible for science to have zero theories to explain a phenomenon, though science is looking for one theory. Again, this is different from religion, where zero gods is plausible.

Bannister’s critique to summarize his examples: “The argument leaks like a rusty colander” and “The argument is, to use a technical term from academic philosophy, bonkers.”
No, what’s bonkers is the idea that his examples are analogous to the subject at hand. All I see them doing is raising dust to cloud the issue. (But then that might be the goal.)
The general problem
Bannister generalizes the argument: never pick something out of a collection because it leaves you open to the challenge, “Hold on! You rejected all these other ones, so why not just go one further and reject them all?” He phrases it this way:

You see, the underlying problem with the “One God Less” argument is that it goes too far. If the argument were valid, it would have a devastating consequence, namely that it would behave like a universal acid and erode all exclusive truth claims, be they in theology, law, or science.

It goes too far only when you force it there. Sometimes “None of the above” is an option and sometimes not. You can suggest that a Christian believe in zero gods, but you can’t tell a vegan to adopt zero dietary regimes (they have to eat something).
Let’s return to Fred’s poor garden, ravaged the previous night by some kind of animal. The constant fight of gardeners against animals that eat their crops is well understood. You know that something trashed Fred’s garden, so “this had zero causes” isn’t an option.
And we’re supposed to see this as analogous to the religion case? Compare many animals with the many religions. We know that all these animals exist. In sharp contrast, most religions must be false and they might all be. There are one or more causes of Fred’s damaged garden, while there could be zero or more gods that actually exist. “Zero” is absolutely not an answer in the garden case, while it is a very live option in the religion case.
Not all religions are the same, y’know!
Bannister now wants to argue that when you compare religions, Christianity comes out decisively on top. He begins by scolding his favorite atheist, Richard Dawkins.

Dawkins has made a fairly basic mistake, namely failing to notice that when multiple explanations are offered for something—be that a murder, a scientific theory, or a religious claim—we don’t immediately assume that all are equally likely.

All religions have the same Achilles Heel—supernatural belief. If that single foundational assumption is wrong, then they’re all wrong—all equally wrong and all in the same way. Only if the supernatural does indeed exist are the differences interesting and worth comparing. Without the supernatural, those differences are trivia, and Bannister does nothing to argue for the existence of the supernatural.
And then, in a startling addition to the conversation, Bannister states: “It often comes as a shock to many atheists to know that there is surprisingly good evidence for God.”
Wow—are we to get some argument to support his just-trust-me handwaving for Christianity’s remarkable claims? Nope, just a link to Alvin Plantinga’s “Two Dozen (or so) Theistic Arguments.” (I’ve skimmed it in the past without finding anything interesting. Point out anything you find noteworthy.)
Conclude this argument in part 3b.

I’m a friendly enough sort of chap . . .
I’m not a hostile person to meet.
But I think it’s important to realise
that when two opposite points of view are expressed with equal intensity,
the truth does not necessarily lie exactly halfway between them.
It is possible for one side to be simply wrong.
— Richard Dawkins

Image credit: David Whelan, flickr, CC