@Jeruba – I would suggest there is a distinction to be made between what exists in a literary fashion and what exists as an actual instantiation – Barney exists inasmuch he appears on your TV screen, like it or not, and annoys you. In that sense, Barney is real, and therefore the target of both adulation and hate.
In the sense I hold when I aver that I am an atheist, it is impossible to hate any deity, because there is simply nothing to hate. There is no proper object of the emotion. God does not appear on the Saturday morning kids’ TV slot here, unlike Pikachu. I guess it is possible to hate the idea of a God, but it’s not something I personally attach any emotion to.
In the sense that theistic beliefs are often propounded through holy books that include a narrative element, one could hate the characters in the story, as far as the suspension of disbelief allows, but that is a qualitatively different experience from coming face to face with the person who actually puts on the Barney costume. You might want to set fire to Barney when watching him on TV, but I would be willing to wager that you wouldn’t really set light to Barney in person.
I guess I’ve just said, in a very roundabout way, that fictional characters belong in a separate ontology to real beings. They exist, but in a different way. Theists do not make the claim of literary existence for their gods, they claim existence as an instantiation of “being A” with properties X, Y, and Z.
I believe they are wrong.