About the gate stopper resistor.
The main function of the gate stopper resistor, is to stop parasitic oscillations by the MOSFET of its own accord. To be effective the gate stopper must be placed close to the gate and not be too higher resistance. The oscillations are due to the parasitic L,C & R of both the MOSFET and the circuit layout. It is quite right that a hard pull up or pull down can prevent oscillations, but this is bad practice, especially for a non continually switching application like this, and, sooner or later, it will bite you. A hard pull up or pull down may not prevent oscillations though- it all depends on the layout, including decoupling. Bear in mind that when a MOSFET oscillates it is normally in the 1MHz to 20Mz range (always 4MHz with me

) and at that frequency range the physical circuit and components are nothing like the schematic. And with the newer low voltage, low gate threshold, high conductance (and massive parasitic capacitance) MOSFETs the situation is much more critical.
But anyway, in this application, there is not a hard pull down and the pull up is so weak (aiming for 1MR) that in terms of parasitic oscillations it is practically an open circuit or worse, due to the parasitics of a high value resistor.
About the gate stopper protecting the driving circuit (MCU). This is rather an odd one, because what are you protecting the driving circuit from? Sure, if you are driving the MOSFET in a fire and brimstone situation, say a SMPS, where there are all sorts of nasty things going on at the MOSFET gate, but then there is no way you could be driving the MOSFET direct under those circumstances anyway. Any gate stopper that had a high enough resistance to protect the driving element would slug the MOSFET to hell and it would not be able to switch at even 50kHz let alone 4MHz used in some SMPS circuits. Instead you would have to use a gate driver chip between the MOSFET and the controlling element (MCU). In that situation the gate stopper, in conjunction with other components, would be used for shaping the gate waveform rather than stopping parasitic oscillations.
Just a footnote about parasitic oscillations and protecting the driving element.
There are a few options that can be used to tame an oscillating MOSFET, in addition to gate stoppers. David Hess mentioned an effective one: fit a lossy elements on the leads of the MOSFET. This could simply be a lossy ferrite bead placed on the MOSFET self leads, as you often see on commercial equipment, especially SMPS and TVs.
If you do have a concern about protecting the input of a MOSFET driving element, there are simple techniques to achieve this without increasing the value of the gate stopper resistor: a couple of schottky catching diodes, for example.