If 'Militant' Atheists are Wrong, How Are they a Threat?

In all the complaints about so-called "militant" atheists, one thing which religious theists tend to leave out is any explanation about why these theists are such a threat or problem. If they are rude, how is their rudeness worse than that of Christians who preach hellfire? If they are divisive, how are they more divisive than Christians who insist on using the government to endorse their religion? If they are simply wrong, won't God show them the truth before long?

Colby Cosh writes:

If it’s true that some form of religious faith is positively required for a satisfactory human life, then there is no need to oppose Richard Dawkins at all; any minute now, the professor is bound to see through the miserable shallowness of being a bestselling author, holding a chair at the world’s greatest university, and enjoying marital bliss with a beautiful television actress. In the meantime we are confronted with the spectacle of Dawkins and thousands of other unabashed atheists going about their business without becoming deranged by existential nausea. On the evidence, they seem to become more common, not less, as one ascends the ladders of income, education, or cognitive ability. ...

Any one of them can attest that contentment and sanity do not require “a purpose that transcends the material plane.” But it’s not thought quite right to say so too loudly — perhaps especially in Canada, which hasn’t generated many crusading public atheists. ...We...still encounter controversies like the one now going on in several Ontario municipalities, where secular groups have quarrelled continually with religious conservatives over the right to commence council meetings with public prayer.

If prayer works, there should be no reason elected Christians cannot ask God’s blessing on their work in private. Evidently they’re not fighting for the right to pray, which no one proposes to deny them, but for the right to make a collective gesture of exclusion — to seek public sanction for the supremacy of religious faith and, by implication, the supremacy of believers. What has Richard Dawkins ever said or done that is uglier or more dangerous to social peace than this?

Cosh asks what I think is a very interesting question: if atheists like Dawkins are so wrong about the importance of religion and gods in a person's life, then won't they quickly see the error of their ways? If there are any gods, won't they soon move to instruct the awful atheists about how wrong they are? On the other hand, isn't their very ability to live full and interesting lives a demonstration of how right they are: you don't need religion, religious beliefs, or theism in your life. If you think you do, perhaps it's only because you've had religion pushed on you for so long that it's hard to see anything else.

It should be little wonder that when people complain about "militant" atheists, it often seems that their real problem is with the presence of atheists and not with anything in particular they are saying. Open, unapologetic atheists make it difficult for religious theists to maintain the fiction that their religion is as important and necessary as they want to believe. It's never enough that their religion simply be subjectively valuable; instead, their religion must be objectively true, good, and wonderful. How can such a position be retained, however, in the face of so many atheists?