The funny thing about this video is Ricky Gervais is literally just repeating back to Richard Dawkins one of the lines he has used on Christians for many years. Not only do you see Ricky and Richard nodding in agreement, this is a weird claim that I have heard made by many others since the rise of the "new atheists" and their caustic brand of one-upmanship rhetorical atheism.
Surely I'll get comments like...
"He's a comedian, it's just comedy." - The context of this conversation is not pure comedy. He is repeating a common line from Dawkins (who is not a comedian but is an anti-theist) back to Dawkins. While they obviously think it's funny they also think its a worthwhile point in favor of atheism.
"You don't understand Ricky's REAL point." Yes. I do. It's pretty plain and simple and no mental gymnastics is needed to see that it's ridiculous to say that Christians are "nearly atheists."
"Mike, this is really about the 'outsider test of faith' where we ask Christians to explain why they don't believe in other gods and then, after they give the reasons, we say 'those are the same reasons I don't believe in your God and when you apply the same standards you have for rejecting other religions to your own religion you will become and atheist too.'" First, the claim that Christians are nearly atheists has no true connection to the outsider test of faith. Second, the outside test of faith (and a host of things coming from the "street epistemologist" playbook) doesn't actually undermine Christianity at all. Here's a video on that... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQpV5lTlI9w
My website https://BibleThinker.org