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 have to believe that the main point in all the religions of the whole world is simply one huge mistake. If you are a Christian, you are free to think that all these religions, even the queerest ones, contain at least some hint of the truth.

When I was an atheist I had to try to persuade myself that most of the human race have always been wrong about the question that mattered to them most; when I became a Christian I was able to take a more liberal view.

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Christianity is thus much closer — and more sympathetic — to the intent and assumptions behind Hinduism, Islam, Baha'is, Buddhists, et cetera than materialist atheism. Yet Christianity is often trashed on grounds it is too "exclusive" — as Lewis goes on to admit (and any atheist would agree): "As in arithmetic — there is only one right answer to a sum, and all other answers are wrong; but some of the wrong answers are much nearer being right than others."

Yet I've never heard atheism criticized on the same grounds: that by saying God or the supernatural does not exist, an atheist "excludes" every faith which presumes otherwise. Christians must be arrogant, self-aggrandizing, and closed-minded for thinking "well, if X, which we believe, is correct, then not-X must not be" — but atheists are just making sense when they do likewise.