chanel - // I think being an atheist is not something that you can consciously "become". //
Clearly - because, as has been advised on this thread, and always is on any thread on this subject, we are all born as non-believers because belief is something you can grasp only when you have sufficient maturity of thought processes to umderstand what you believe, or indeed not.
// Believing or non-believing is a state of mind that is often beyond our conscious control. //
As I pointed out in my previous paragraph, belief or non-belief is absolutely a concious decision - that is the only way a mind can change from its default non-belief system with which it is born, to making a decision to believe in something, or not.
In order for belief to become the position moving forward, the mind has to consider the alternative, of non-belief, and reject it, the process cannot be completed without both those factors.
I do not, not believe in God because of anything in my subvoncious, but entirely because of what my concious mind tells me - that I am personally not in need of the comfort system that belief in a higher deity offers to manking, and that has been in mankind's collective mind since he had a mind with which to think about such things.
That need for 'something higher' has existed since early man worshipped the sun, and nature, right through to Scientology - mankind likes comfort, religion offers it.