There’s a popular atheist meme that goes like this:
I agree that if I randomly believed in a god among 5,000 similar gods there would be little chance I was worshipping the true God.
But that’s not what Christians do when they worship God.
“God” is not just some super-powered being people happen to call a god. The true God is the infinite act of being itself, unlimited in power, knowledge and goodness. God isn’t a being in the universe, God is the ground of being and so is infinite in all respects.
If God were just some limited, finite being, then atheists could rightfully ask, “Who created God?” But if God is the infinite foundation of all reality, then that explains why reality exists at all and shows God isn’t just one being among many. Asking “Who created God?” would be like asking what is pulling the locomotive on the train. The locomotive isn’t a train car and God isn’t one being among many.
The reason I don’t believe in Thor, Zeus, or Buddha (who isn’t a god in Buddhism, by the way), is that these are finite beings. I believe in “God” and these beings simply are not God no matter what anyone calls them. In their respective mythologies, these beings often come into existence, they change, they’re ignorant, they’re thwarted, and sometimes they do evil. Their existence in time shows they aren’t God because God made time. Finally, their potential to change (or be actualized) shows they are not God who is pure actuality itself.
I agree with ancient Greek and medieval Christian, Jewish and Muslim philosophers that there is one infinite God. We may disagree about how God revealed himself to humanity, but we can agree that one infinite God who is pure actuality exists.
Moreover, atheists can’t say I must reject the God of the Bible because he sounds just like the gods of mythology. I interpret the Bible in accord with what reason tells me about God. So, if I know from reason that God can’t have a physical body as part of his divine nature (since God created all matter from nothing), then that means the Bible’s descriptions of the Father having a body must be non-literal, or examples of God using earthly images to communicate to humans (which is called a theophany).
Finally, this meme backfires on atheists.
Imagine you’re at a party and ninety-five out of 100 people there say they heard a loud sound outside, but they disagree on the nature of the sound, like whether it was low- or high-pitched. Would you agree there was at least a sound of some kind, or would you think the ninety-five people are deluded and the five people who didn’t hear any noise are on to something? Now, large groups of people can be wrong about things, but they are usually correct, which counts in favor of the view, shared by most of humanity, that (at the bare minimum) rejects a strictly material, atheistic view of the universe.
So which “god” do I believe in? I agree with ninety-five percent (give or take) of all people, past and present, that the universe is not a purely material and easily explicable reality. There is instead an “ultimate explanation” that cannot be a lower-case “god” since those raise just as many questions as they allegedly answer. Instead, I follow reason to believe in the one, true infinite God who became man and dwelt among us.