Rejecting theism is a fairly minor intellectual accomplishment (at least, when the trail has already been blazed for you), but it is an accomplishment nonetheless.
Those who got to atheism based on purely rational arguments, rather than their position in culture etc, have achieved at least a small handful of minor feats in the arts of rationality. Nothing to get too self-congratulatory about, unless you were especially indoctrinated, but still an important step.