Dear Ricky, yes, there is only one God.

Ricky Gervais is a well-known actor and comedian, and I'm definitely a fan of his. He's also pretty outspoken about his atheism and critique of religion. The thing I find the most interesting about this popular argument against God's existence, is that it is self-defeating. This argument attempts to discredit the truth claims of all religions that believe in a god by saying that it is actually the one that holds the truth. All that this argument does is replace other truth claims with another one, but it tries to make itself look better than all the other options by implying it's not doing the very thing it's doing. You can literally turn this argument against itself and say, "There are all these different religions in the world that believe in God, but here you are saying there isn't one. And you think you're right? Right, I'm sure you are. The truth has FINALLY arrived." There is nothing intellectual about just saying "they're wrong and I'm right," it is a position usually loaded with emotionally based views on the world.

At it's heart, the argument here really comes down to one basic question, is God real or not? Of course it is suggesting that no, he isn't, and even subtly implies that religion is ridiculous. Pointing out that there have been many religions from the beginning of time that believed in God but had a different idea about who he is, does not at all act as evidence that God isn't real based on sheer odds alone. Personally I would actually argue the opposite, that if we look at the fact that so many religions believe in God versus belief systems that don't, perhaps they know something even though they can't all be right at the same time on the details. I like how CS Lewis tackles this topic best in his book Mere Christianity when he says:

“If you are a Christian you do not have to believe that all the other religions are simply wrong all through. If you are an atheist you do have to believe that the main point in all the religions of the whole world is simply one huge mistake.”

I agree with Lewis on this issue. In fact, the Bible has talked about humanity's desire to create and follow false gods since the beginning of time. It is therefore no surprise to find thousands of different gods within the world, I would say it's to be expected. To answer this argument's claim directly, yes in fact the God of Christianity has always asserted to be the one true God in a world of false gods, that is an accurate statement.

The world clearly has an origin, and there had to be a cause of that origin, but was it random, or caused by a God? In my own words, Christianity basically says that an honest look at the world itself shows it to be so obvious that the world could not have been randomly created, so that the person has no choice but to accept there is a creator: 

 

"For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse." -‭Romans 1:20 NIV‬

I am by no means minimizing the gravity of a question this significant. The question of whether God is real or not is perhaps the most profound question every human being asks themself at some point in their life. What makes it more complicated for each person is that we tend to base our answer to the question on far more than just what the evidence suggests may be true. We tend to bring all of our personal beliefs about our identity, our emotional baggage, and psychology, into the the decision making process when considering the answer to this question. In order to answer this question, one has to consider many other complex issues, especially evil and suffering in the world, which evokes many strong emotions. We all have a choice to make here though, will we allow the evidence to lead us, or the culture of the time we live in, or our emotions? I wonder if we all have ever fully analyzed what is underneath our beliefs on this issue. If we say we don't believe in God, do we really even know why we assert that claim, underneath all of the surface level reasons we usually default to? If our emotional defenses would have us say there is no God so we can avoid accepting some very hard truths about the world, would we be willing to even accept the possibility that he is real if an honest investigation into the claim would point us to that answer? How much does truth matter to us when it's about the most important question in the world?