The Stupid! It Burns! (mythical edition)

In 10 Myths About Atheists?, Tom Hoopes rebuts Amanda Marcotte's "10 Myths Many Religious People Hold About Atheists." Boldface indicates Marcotte's myths, which Hoopes quotes; regular typeface indicates Hoopes' rebuttals. All of Hoopes rebuttals are stupid, but I'll quote only those that are burningly stupid. All other emphasis and links are original.

"Myth" 2: "Atheists are just angry with God. . . .

I don’t know if we religious folks consider atheists mad at God. I think that atheists just don’t want to let God be God. If God is God, and we are not, then we won’t understand him any better than my 4-year-old understands me; in fact we will understand him far less. Atheists want God to be small enough to fit into their heads. But that would be no God at all.

"Myth" 3: "Atheists are aggressive and rude." . . .

Now, we can grant her that not all religious believers are polite . . . But I’ll take the hit for that small number of religious countries, and apologize for them, just to be magnanimous. And she can take the killings perpetrated by atheist regimes in the 20th century, which produced a mountain of body-bags that dwarfs millennia of religious killings.

"Myth" 4: "Atheism is a white dude thing." . . .

I will flat-out agree with her here. The Chinese atheists who slaughtered whole families and drove the Church underground were not “white dudes.” Nor were the Mexican atheists who shot priests and hung little boys. Atheists have a proud multicultural tradition indeed!

"Myth" 5: "Atheism is just a faith like any other." . . .

We have a world that is ordered, beautiful and features life-forms much more complicated than a cable TV. It doesn’t take faith for me to posit a creator; it is just a logical deduction from the evidence. But atheists say it was created by an unusually robust landslide. "And, um, lightning. And maybe a geyser spurting at just the right moment. And, like, a tornado type thingy," they quickly add. . . .

"Myth 7: "Atheist lives are bleak and lack meaning." . . .

But no one claims that atheists don’t party hard enough.

What we claim is that, while they party, they are soulless growths reacting to random stimuli on a cold piece of rock hurtling through the darkness of empty space, trying desperately to distract their attention from the abyss of emptiness that will annihilate them a moment later when they die. . . .

"Myth" 10: "Atheists are out to destroy Christmas." . . .

In other words, "War on Christmas? Don’t be silly! We just want Christmas to have no legal rights in our nation’s ubiquitous public institutions! Or at Target either, while we’re at it." . . .

In other words: "Destroy Christmas? Don’t be silly! We just want to desecrate it, profane it and make it an entirely arbitrary expression of personal tastes!"