The Most Brilliant Minds Alive Today Are Either Horribly Dumb or Deceived - Atheist Thinking

In a corollary to my post yesterday on atheists believing they are basically very, very good.  There is also a kind of attitude in the blogs of intellectual atheists that is very derisive towards those who are believers.  Sometimes it borders on smugness or even bordering on snarkiness, but it is rarely very far from derisive.

Thus one is left wondering if this tiny minority of the population has arrived at some special knowledge or insight that is kept from the overwhelming majority of those who are the intellectual giants of, not merely the past, but of the present day. 

On the one hand, we have Christians who are curious as to how one looks around at nature and doesn't see design, and how one cannot feel the presence of God.  Thus some Christians or other believers are not kind towards atheists either, and inclined to see them as crackpots or worse.  It is well said by many atheists that it is unlikely that an atheist will ever be elected to high office.  But in this case a huge majority are experiencing something and intuiting something about the universe that is demonstrably proving itself in their lives to be true and valuable.

On the other hand, atheists are not, to my knowledge, experiencing anything or looking around at nature and seeing chaos or something that is obviously not designed.  Rather the atheist goes out of his way to find any explanation other than God to describe how things are and what things mean.  So how does one become smug believing in the absence of something?  Help me out.