I think I have plenty of skepticism and critical thinking, thank you very much...
These qualities are almost never present in people who
believe in the supernatural. Or, to be fair, they're not present in sufficient amount at the right place. Unfortunately, people are very good at compartmentalizing their mind - in some areas they apply critical thinking, in others they don't - usually because there are some emotional connections which they don't want to sever.
This doesn't apply to religious thinking only - people can be selectively 'uncritical' in many other areas. If you like a girl, you may become blind to some of her faults (you'll discover them after you marry her). A world-class scientist may refuse to accept that his long-cherished theory was wrong, because he invested too much time and effort in it.
Etc.
Now,
every religious person I've ever met (and talked to about religion) showed typical symptoms of voluntary suspension of scepticism and critical thinking in matters related to the core of their religion. I dare say this applies in general.
I think that if all religious people on the planet decided tomorrow to extend their innate scepticism to their religion, I'd wake up into a ~80% atheist world (the rest are simply too gullible by nature).
I don't think you have to be incapable of critical thought or skepticism to be a theist... maybe to be a mindless theist controlled by a "prophet" or authority figure, but not a theist in itself. The constant rambling of "atheism is the way" only helps my reasoning that atheism might as well be as much a religion as those it fights... holy war, except now it's belief in presence vs. belief in absence, rather than two or more beliefs in presence.
You can't believe in absence. Atheism isn't about believing at all, that's the major difference
Critical thinking and scepticism tells you that you can't believe in something unless you have a very good reason to. I have a very good reason to believe that America exists because there's plenty of evidence for that. On the other hand, if you told me there is another large continent on this planet that somehow escaped discovery so far, I'd be extremely sceptical. I wouldn't
believe there is no such continent, I'd simply conclude that it's very unlikely.
Maybe it's not so much theists are incapable of critical thought as they need someone to look up to; humans naturally rally around the few. It was only natural they'd eventually want to rally around someone who's perfect and infallible, as part of our desire to always be right, and always know what is right. By rallying behind a God, we can change things from being our principles, into being the principles.
Even if there was such god figure, he doesn't seem to be sending clear messages. I mean, which version of "morals" and "principles" that God "offers" (or rather imposes) is supposed to be the right one? Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Pagans and others can't really agree on some unified version of the right morals, the right way of life, or even trivial things like how to worship this god figure correctly. In fact, they disagree with each other so strongly on so many things they are willing to
kill. They've been doing that for the last ~3000 years at least.
This alone makes religion as a concept very doubtful, don't you think? Apparently, it serves no purpose. If its main benefit is supposed to be to provide us humble mortals with the right morals, it has failed MISERABLY.
. 
