Myth:
Every person worships something, even skeptics and atheists. Everyone bows at some sort of altar and pays homage to some sort of god. It's what separates humanity from animals.
Response:
The claim that atheists replace worship of God with worship of something else ranges over a variety of possible objects for atheists' worship: Satan, themselves, humanity, etc. In addition to being wrong, all these myths share in common the belief that worship is somehow fundamental to human existence such that it simply isn't possible for a person to live a decent life without worshipping something. What they worship is their god; how they worship is their religion. Even atheists are included.
One method of promoting this myth is to redefine the concept of "god" with very broad and ambiguous strokes, calling it a person's "ultimate concern" or "whatever is most important in your life." There is also very often a redefinition of "worship," making it mean something as trivial as "intense attention." Once sufficient redefinition of all the key terms is done, it's possible to insist that everyone "worship" something because everyone pays "intense attention" to something, and if this is what is "most important" in their lives, then it must be their "god."
With categories so ambiguous, it doesn't take much creativity to argue someone is worshipping something if one is determined to do so. Such tactics reveal that a person is only grasping for straws, though. Just because you can identify the one most important thing in someone's life doesn't mean they actually "worship" it. This is not to say that atheists live such bland lives that nothing is important or relevant to them. Quite the contrary, atheists can live very full and interesting lives, and atheists do generally regard something(s) as important to them. Indeed, an atheist might even go as far as to revere certain political figures, artists, works of art, ideas, etc.
None of this, however, is the same as worship when used in the traditional religious sense. That is why the above claim commits the Fallacy of Equivocation: it starts out using the term "worship" in the standard manner and ends up using it in a very different way. To be a valid argument, it would have to use the terms in exactly the manner all the way through.
Also, if we keep in mind the fact that theists hold some things in equal regard as atheists, what happens is that both atheists and theists â€" even Christians â€" become blatant polytheists. Is that what the above claim really intends? What is particularly bizarre about this argument is that does a grave injustice to the genuine worship which occurs in religion. When a person says that my "god" is books because I "worship" books just like they worship their god, they are not only misrepresenting me but they are also denigrating themselves, their religion and their god. It is a sign of significant desperation when someone deliberately undercuts their own religious beliefs and commitment in order to score false rhetorical points in an argument.
Insisting that everyone worships something is, at least for Christians, often connected with accusations of idolatry. If everyone worships something, then they are either worshipping the True God or they are worshipping something else in the place of God. The former group encompasses genuine Christians; the latter group encompasses idolaters of one sort or another.
This myth is also commonly based on the associated belief that everyone has some innate desire to seek out and worship God (for example, because God designed us to be this way), but for one reason or another people get distracted or diverted from that quest. Of course, assuming this is obviously an example of Begging the Question, a logical fallacy, because it's assuming the truth of the precisely the issue which is at dispute between atheists and theists. You can't argue that atheists "really" worship something by assuming that atheists are innately seeking out the god which they dispute the existence of.
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