Lapsed atheists

One of the more amusing comments at the interfaith meeting mentioned in my last post was one theist's comment that he, along with many others present there, was a "lapsed atheist". On reflection, this was probably directed at the Christian panelist, who was a Roman Catholic, and the Humanist panelist, who had been gently ranting about inability to get off the RC church's membership rolls. It's an amusing concept - one doesn't normally think of a theist as being an apostate atheist.

It did get me thinking, though: what motivates people to ditch atheism? In some ways, atheism is the least stable religious position - you only need one solitary bit of hard evidence to be justified in dropping it. Have lapsed atheists acquired some strong new scientific evidence that I've yet to stumble across? Or have they simply renounced membership of the reality-based community in favour of a viewpoint that they personally find more effective? I'm guessing the latter, but I'd be interested to know for sure.

The problem is that I currently don't know any lapsed atheists, at least not that I'm aware of. Can any of my theistic readers* help me out here?

* I realise I'm making a rather large assumption here that anyone out there actually reads my blog... However, if I'm wrong, no-one will notice, so I might as well take the chance. It's all a matter of usefulness :)