Are all atheists this ill-informed about religion?

[robvalue]

Right. People need to drop this assumption that anything in the bible happened just as it is written, apart from what we can properly verify independently. Referring to one part of the story to back up another is like proving the One Ring is real by analysing Frodo's motivations and actions. Any sensible person can see that would be ridiculous; but they can't always see that they are doing the same thing. It's this drilled-in idea that there is some automatic truth to any of it. There isn't. At least, not to anyone assessing it objectively. At the very best, it offers an extremely vague and warped view of history. That's if the authors weren't simply making stuff up. I think it's quite clear that they were, at least some of the time.