"Atheism cannot be true because..."

Apologists and creationists (what's the difference? I may write another blog post about my views on that some day) really love to give long lists of atheist "claims." Atheists claim this, atheists claim that...

This whole concept that atheism is some kind of world view with a well-defined set of dogmas, beliefs and assertions (that most atheists agree upon) is extremely common, and extremely wrong.

Atheism does not claim that "the universe appeared from nothing" or that "life created itself" or that "we are just the product of random chance" or anything like that. As I have been repeating over and over, theism vs. atheism deals with one question, and one question only: Do you believe in the existence of gods? If you do, then you are a theist, if you don't then you are an atheist. Everything else is completely irrelevant. (It is, in fact, completely possible to be a theist, ie. believe in the existence of a god, and still believe that, for example, life appeared on its own, evolved to its current state by natural laws only, and even that the universe was not created nor fine-tuned by any intelligence. Theism and atheism do not deal with those things at all.)

Another thing that apologists and creationists love to say is that atheism leads to lack of any kind of moral principles. (This argument from morality seems to be almost completely confined to the United States, as it's a very rare argument presented in Europe and other parts of the world. Or should I more accurately say, used to be confined there, because nowadays European creationists are being poisoned by their American counterparts at an increasing rate, and are starting to repeat those arguments in Europe, where it makes even less sense than in America, given that something like 90% of European citizens are secular, and chaos has not ensued.)

I find the moral argument strange not only because it's so obviously false, but also because it seems to be saying that it doesn't really matter what's actually true, but that the only thing that matters is what the consequences of the belief system are. In other words, it doesn't really matter if a god really exists, what matters is that people believe it so that they won't go on a murdering and raping rampage.

This is the same with many of similar arguments. For example, many of them argue that teaching evolution leads to immorality and mass extermination of people. Apparently it doesn't matter whether evolution is true or not; what matters is what its consequences are. Apparently even if it were true, we should censor it so that people won't go in a murdering rampage.