It was pretty condescending indeed.

I actually grew up with a pretty liberal Lutheran Church in the city. When I started questioning Christianity, I wasn't exposed to fundamentalism at all, except for maybe the snippets I might have heard on the television, or in more rare occasions, from my father's side of my extended family. My transition to atheism was purely out of my own intuition. And every single atheist I've ever met shares the same. To suggest that it's out of some immature rebellion or reaction from fundamentalism is absurd.

In fact, really the only people who I've met who rationalized their belief as a reaction to the extremes of others' were those calling themselves 'agnostics'. But even most of them find their decision to agnosticism to be calculated.