Former atheist

[Mudhammam]

2 - Why do people become atheists and then go back to theism? Seriously, I sometimes post in a deist forum and I've met people who were atheists for 20-30-40 years and then quitted and became deists. I'm guessing the same happens with atheists who become new born Christians, the list goes on... I cannot understand. After what I've searched and found I cannot imagine myself going back to theism (even deism) because I know it's either false or the probability of it being true is very low.

I think it has something to do with what Plato says in the Republic (Pascal stresses this point quite a bit in his run-up to the wager as well):

But you know, Socrates, that when someone thinks his end is near, he becomes frightened and concerned about things he didn't fear before. It's then that the stories we're told about Hades, about how people who've been unjust here must pay the penalty there---stories he used to make fun of---twist his soul this way and that for fear they're true. And whether because of the weakness of old age or because he is now closer to what happens in Hades and has a clearer view of it, or whatever it is, he is filled with foreboding and fear, and he examines himself to see whether he has been unjust to anyone. If he find many injustices in his life he awakes from sleep in terror, as children do, and lives in anticipation of bad things to come. But someone who knows that he hasn't been unjust has sweet good hope as his constant companion---a nurse to his old age, as Pindar says, for he puts it charmingly, Socrates, when he says that when someone lives a just and pious life

Sweet hope is in his heart,
Nurse and companion to his age.
Hope, captain of the ever-twisting
Minds of mortal men.