Regarding your statement that "Atheists are smart and religious people are stupid people that need an opiate," I cannot deny that I once believed this, but I no longer do. It is an oversimplification of the origins of beliefs that Jordan Peterson describes in his work on understanding the communication breakdown between religious and scientific individuals. While I agree that it is arrogant and naive to believe in a supernatural being who exists in human form, the idea of the existence of God is a separate argument altogether. As Peterson describes, it is important to have an understanding of one's definition of God before declaring whether he does or does not exist.
I was raised a Christian but became an Atheist because I did not recognize the existence of God and believed only in what I could see. I failed to realize how I was a living contradiction, as I believed in intangible things like ideas, thoughts, and strategies, but then used God's intangibility as proof of his nonexistence. But now, with my new definition of reality, understanding that there is a physical, tangible realm and a metaphysical, intangible realm, and with my deeper understanding of Christian beliefs, I have arrived at what I believe to be the most rational and logical understanding of the existence of God.
As I understand it, the Christian Bible represents God as blessing us when we have good fortune and punishing us when we don't - is that not reality? I now believe that God is the universe all around us, and once we believe that, the idea of God is just the concept of reality itself. Knowing that reality is all around us, I believe God to be reality, and therefore, being that reality exists, I believe God does exist. I am not referring to a human figure in the sky or a conscious heaven or afterlife, but I do believe that those things exist in a sense, as after a person dies, there is something left on earth after them - such as the reverberation of their existence.
In this way, I can understand the world through logical means but also acknowledge the metaphysical. Having said this, I am no longer an atheist or a Christian, but I understand that my beliefs correlate with naturalistic pantheism. I did not know it was called this at the time, nor did I realize that there was even such a belief system similar to it, which is what makes me more certain of my belief. If there is one thing I do not like, it is to believe something just because it sounds right. I prefer to start from scratch, without knowing any of the answers, find my own understanding of the world, and then, once it correlates with an existing belief, feel reassured that it is correct.