There is an easy litmus test to know if you are talking to an atheist; mention science in the ancient world. Or the modern world. They really want to tell you how religious people are wrong.

Critics make it their business to know all about what they debunk - so they spend a lot of time reading other criticisms and quote-mining and copying and pasting stuff they have bookmarked.  

Now, if we amend the title the point becomes more clear: 

The average atheist knows the bible better than most Christians, just like global warming skeptics know climate science better than most people who accept climate science. Atheists don't understand religion, just like if you hand climate skeptics the data from an ice core they won't understand it, they just have broad talking points. It's only when you drill down (pardon the pun) that you discover talking points are where understanding ends. They want to talk about concepts.

http://www.american.com/archive/2014/april/taking-religion-seriously

Now, I don't necessarily follow from Murray's conclusion that so many people are religious that there must be something to it. Pauline Kael famously used that reasoning to disbelieve Richard Nixon could have won the 1972 presidential election - saying she didn't see how it was possible because she didn't know a single person who voted for him - and, as Robert Olley notes, 100 years about the 'special circle' of physicists in Zurich were all cheating on their wives with each others' wives. Are we to believe that because everyone cool in ETH Zuruch physics was doing it there must be some value?

That's plain ol' moral relativism, the very thing that religion is against.