Christians, Jews, Muslims and atheists have one thing in common: they don't believe in gods. Indeed, as Cardinal Tomas Spidlik liked to say, "Christians were atheists for the first 400 years." What he meant was that, for the Roman and Greek pagans, the Jews and the Christians of the first centuries were pagans. They had no God whose name others recognized. They were "without" gods. Even now, we Christians may seem like atheists in the eyes of people of other religions.
It is very important to recognize that our God is not merely one exemplar of a group of beings called "gods." He is a great Mystery. Sometimes I find myself agreeing with atheists when they say there is no God, if by that they mean there is not a God who is "a thing among other things." In this they are correct.
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