The fact that non religious people know more about the religion is what probably makes them a non believer.
BTW, this too, definitely. I mean, while my initial opposition to religion (i.e. when I was 15 or something) was based rather on lack of "self-evidence" of a deity, these days with my somewhat-decent knowledge of the workings of Christianity there's an almost violent opposition to its tenets. As an example, to me proper Christianity ended about 50AD. What came after was a "reinvention" of it by the apostles.
rumborak
Yes, most of what today's Christianity is might better be termed Paulism. If you accept the new testament accounts who who Jesus was supposed to be then he was a jewish teacher teaching the jewish law to his fellow jews, including the requirement to keep the jewish law. Paul directly contradicted Jesus teachings on this in Galatians. In fairness to Paul, the chances are that Chritianity as such probably wouldn't exist today, were it not for him. Whether this is a good or a bad thing is a moot point, obviously. It is a shame that the old mysogynist had to bastardize it to suit his own theological bent along the way.
One of the problems with religion is that most people approach it purely from a devotional perspective rather than from a historical, critical or philosophical perspective, so they never learn anything othtr than what they are told to believe. The clergy and the church as a whole can shoulder much of the blame for this - priests who attend theology departments of universities and seminaries are taught both old and new testament literary criticism and also such things as the failures of the classical arguments for the existence of god, but none of this ever gets passed on to the congregations. I guess this is because religions in the US do contain a strong business element, so the churches are encouraged to give the population what they want rather than the knowledge they have accrued during their training. I guess Chip and Betty are only interested in whether they're going to get to glad-hand Jeebus and sit on a cloud for eternity rather than the finer points of how the Epic of Gilgamesh was incorporated into Genesis or whatever.
The point about people needing to learn about other religions and such was very well made, too!