If even just one minute tenet or claim of any religion is even partially true, then atheism is 100% false. So I'll defend theism versus atheism until such time as you concede (arguendo) that at least one of the blind men below is experiencing some sort of evidence for theism.
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They're experiencing evidence of
A Big Something. They can deduce from that there's an objective reality. But the overall character of that reality is something they don't know.
Don't forget to not privilege yourself with thinking you see the whole elephant (whatever 'big something' it's meant to represent). It can be easy to do, looking at the drawing, to assume the third-person perspective that the artist assumes. But the artist doesn't actually have a god's-eye view where he can stand outside of his own limited mind and see the entire elephant. It's there in the drawing because the parable says "elephant". But what does the elephant stand for? If you're a theist you'll inevitably say "God". Many atheists would say "universe".
I wondered "why are they blind?" So I've read up on
the parable, and read
John Godfrey Saxe's rhyme about it. The point is not that the blind men are all partly right, but that they're religiously dogmatic about their partial perceptions and thus quarrelsome about them:
So oft in theologic wars,
The disputants, I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance
Of what each other mean,
And prate about an Elephant
Not one of them has seen!
Different traditions propose different solutions to the problem of religious dogmatism. Buddhism's advice is to stop clinging to views. Rumi, a Sufi, suggested they need a candle so they can agree better (the Sufi version "Elephant in a Dark Room"). And this idea of illumination, to make fuller use of the senses, is the closest to what a scientific view of the parable would be. Namely, that these persons with limited perceptions should compare notes about the evidence of their senses
So to sum up, a non-biased reading of the parable is it indicates that people manage to experience "something". But stay clueless of what the something is because of religious dogmatism.
You want to say they're partly right about God. But in doing this you assume God. Somehow you think the elephant must represent God, but don't explain why. And it does nothing to undermine atheism to keep asserting God exists.
