Religion is a form of apophenia, our social and pattern-seeking cognition anthropomorphising natural forces, as well as a coping mechanism regarding our powerlessness against said forces of nature, letting us indulge in the illusion of being able to negotiate with them, as well as our ignorance. As such. even without the considerable cultural and intellectual dominance religion, and especially religious institutions, typically wield, religiosity is something that comes naturally and is the bias of inertia that often requires a lot of critical thinking to overcome. Of course, as religion’s prominence in society decreases, this inertia decays, and the scientific and technological advancement of the last two hundred fifty years has drastically reduced our powerlessness and ignorance and consequently the need to cope with them (or as Nietzsche put it, “God is dead, and we have killed him”), so it’s not such a small minority anymore..
I do agree, though, that any atheist who collectively judges theists as inherently lesser beings is a conceited fool. Just to start with, people are not neatly split into rational and irrational like that - people who are otherwise very smart and sensible are still capable of having some, in some cases even very, irrational beliefs in certain areas, having seen through one popular false belief may well be your Stopped Clock moment, and he who believes he cannot be fooled fools himself. And of course, the less religious society becomes, the less rejecting religion becomes am act of intellectual defiance.
However, I am certain that there such elitism, while certainly displayed by many of the loudest of atheists, is not even remotely as widespread or strong as Wright thinks - most atheists hold egalitarian and humanist philosophies that are at odds at such a mindset (this, of course, does not mean they are immune to it, as, again, no one truly rational) and many are former theists who have come to reject religion through reasoning (very different idea from being destined to realise the Truth - by the way, I hope Wright is not a Calvinist…).
I will also note that those atheists who fit this mould often tend to be far closer ideology to Wright than to most humanist atheists.
As I have said before, I see little humility in believing that there is a cosmic force that is somehow akin to human nature - despite being defined through many attributes so utterly dissimilar to the human experience - that chooses, out of this incomprehensibly vast Cosmos, among the all the innumerable lifeforms on even this one planet, specific ground-apes whose lifespans are utterly negligible in face of Deep Time, as his favourites. Is it not more humble to accept that we are not the crown of creation, not the centre of the universe, but ephemeral wondrous accidents, nothing but the tiniest moments in a story grand and tragic and beautiful beyond all comprehension, but that there is nothing wrong with that and that we should appreciate and live to the fullest whatever time we can carve out in defiance against an uncaring universe and the inevitability of death’s oblivion?
Further, there are very few people - especially among atheists! - who wed themselves to their ideology and hold said ideology beyond question with such intensity and indeed unabashed pride as Christian fundamentalists.
Finally, Gnosticism is literally the diametric opposite of materialistic humanism.
