Sheesh, that's a quibble. The bad news is that God probably doesn't exist. And the point about messengers is a figure of speech. The point is that atheists are party poopers for pointing to flaws in traditional beliefs that comfort hundreds of millions of folks. For that reason, theists could be inclined to tarnish atheists' characters, associating them with immorality, for example, to distract from their criticisms of religion.