all that Atheism--conscious and reflective
Atheism--does is to carry a step further the restricted denial of the
ordinary religionist. The Christian theist denies every god but his own.
The Atheist, seeing no more evidence for the existence of the Christian
deity than for the existence of any of the deities discarded by the
Christian, seeing, further, that there are exactly the same
contradictions involved in assuming the existence of any one of the
world's deities, places the Christian deity on the list as among those
gods in whose existence he does not believe, and whose existence, so far
as it is defined, may be logically denied.

The really distinguishing feature of philosophic Atheism is its
comprehensiveness, the ranking of all known deities, big and little,
ancient and modern, savage and civilised, gross and subtle, upon the
same level. Historically, we see them all originating in the same
conditions, passing through substantially the same phases of
development, finally to meet with the same fate as civilisation
developes. In this respect Atheism has to be considered in its historic
developments. It begins, as we have seen in the rejection of a
particular god, in favour of some other deity. It is only at a very much
later stage that the whole idea of god is subjected to examination and
analysis in such a way as to lead to the rejection of the conception of
god as a whole. But with that aspect of the subject we shall be
concerned later.

But does Atheism deny the existence of any possible god? This question
might admit of a simple answer if one only knew precisely what it meant.
It is easy enough to understand what is meant by God so long as we keep
to any or all of the gods of the world's religions. But what is meant by
god standing alone and undefined? Historically "God" means a deity
believed in by some people, some where, at some time. And if we put on
one side these particular gods we have nothing left that can be either
affirmed or denied. God in the abstract is not a real existence any more
than tree in the abstract is a real existence. There is a pine tree, a
pear tree, an apple tree, etc., but there is and can be no "tree" apart
from some particular tree. So with "god." There are particular gods, but
if we do away with these, we have no god left as a separate existence.
"God" then becomes a mere word conveying no meaning whatever. Atheism
does not deny the existence of _a_ god for the same reason that it