First, you claim Atheist are first and foremost materialist, and this materialism leads to non-belief. In reality, you have the chain of events all wrong. At our core, most are skeptics, and it is the lack of evidence for the supernatural, not some "faith" in the material, that leads to non-belief. A skeptic does not deny the possibility of anything out of hand without examining the evidence, or as is usually the case for metaphysical claims (metaphysics being that which is beyond science or observation, i.e. the supernatural) the total lack of evidence.
Atheists cannot avoid a materialist worldview. It doesn't matter whether they begin as skeptics or not. In fact, by beginning as a skeptic, they reject everything but the material. The "chain of events" you refer to is not necessarily the same for everyone. Atheists have not cornered the market on skepticism. You seem to think that if a person begins as a skeptic he will come to atheism. That can't be true because many Christians began as skeptics.
Steve.
"I was a deerhunter long before I was a man." ~Gene Wensel's Come November (2000) "A vote is like a rifle; its usefulness depends upon the character of the user." ~Theodore Roosevelt
