Same. At some point I became friends with pretty religious people who were also some of the most intelligent and nice people I had met. My beliefs that religious people are just dumb people who cannot understand the complexity of the real world kinda fell apart then.

I returned back to my pre-teen opinion, still an atheist but with compassion for other people’s beliefs. No need to constantly force my opinion into it or needlessly be a dick because we disagree. I’ve had many interesting discussions since then with very religious people. I still don’t fully get it, and to me it still reeks of indoctrination, but I’ve accepted that it’s fine to disagree.