It appears that you don't disagree nearly as much as you said earlier. We agree on quite a bit.
Your quotes say as much as I did. I just parsed it down. "I didn't want God to exist... I started to feel a change..." and "I felt it. I knew. ...something changed. I lost it."
They may have chose what they wanted to believe, but in the end when the belief came or went, it was not a conscious choice. It just happened.
Yeah... I know. I'm splitting hairs.