Argument from common consent

From Larrys Text -- please wikify and make conform to NPOV:

The first is called the argument from consensus, or from common consent. It goes like this. Throughout the world, in all lands, people believe in some God. And not just now, but in the past, a belief in some God was a very common part of daily life. So the person who denies that God exists is opposing the common consent of all of humanity, that God exists. Who are we to oppose such an enormous consensus? Therefore, God exists.

I think you can see why I say this is a bad argument. First of all, it's not even the case that everyone in all times has believed that God exists. There have been dissenters, atheists, everywhere. Secondly, look at all the different versions of God that people believe in: the gods of the ancient Greeks are very different from the Hindu gods, which are very very different indeed from the spirits that some Africans traditionally worship, which are of course very different still from the Judeo-Christian God. At the very best the most one could say is that some higher power of some sort has been commonly, although not universally, thought to exist.

But neither of the two foregoing reasons are the best reason to think that this argument from consensus is a bad argument. The best reason to think it's a bad argument is that, so to speak, 50 million Frenchmen can be wrong. The mere fact that there is widespread, but not universal consensus about something does not, by itself, prove anything. One might just as plausibly say that, since in medieval Europe most people though the Earth was flat, therefore, probably, the Earth was flat. That just doesn't follow!

Now surely the fact that some manner of religious belief is so widespread is a very interesting fact, well worth study. I would not want to deny that. But the idea that one can infer that God exists, especially the God of Abraham and Jesus, is, I think, kind of silly. I think we can do much better than this. If you think you need an argument in order to be a rational theist, there are several far better arguments to be found.