Atheism is on the spectrum of beliefs about God, which by definition is a theological position. If the question is about God, then it is a theological question. Atheism is a theological position about the existence and nature of God.
Therefore, what you say is partially correct. Since those who claim atheism as their view on God are addressing a theological question, that automatically places them on that theological spectrum. God enters into the question in their minds. God is in their minds and thoughts, right in that moment, even if it is a view through that particular theological lens, which typically sees God in mythic-literal terms. The question of God is not absent in them.
My point is that the question of belief or nonbelief in God is a theological question, and therefore both the theist and atheist are at point or another along that same spectrum. They are not opposites or outside of each other, but degrees of amplitude of the same thing. And I do not believe anyone, is at absolute zero on that spectrum. They aren't, because they are asking the question itself. The question is there, and it is a theological question, and therefore it exists in their psyches. God is not "non-existent" in the atheist. The fact they claim the label is proof of that alone.
Final thought, I am coming to understand how that we as children of this world, before language sets in and begins to restrict how we see the world into terms of this and that, we are incredible sponges of information coming into us in a fully encompassing way. This is for every bit of information coming in, both negative and positive. It is not until language becomes more readily available to us to try to create a "map" of what that experience is like to us, that we truly form how we see things in our later belief structures.
The question of God very much enters into all of our spaces in one way or another, because we as children experienced the very question of the nature of our existence itself by virtue of having been a child living in a preverbal reality, where signs and symbols later take over. The question still exists, regarding the why of our own being, at whatever level or depth of soul our understandings can reach into. Theological questions are ways to view that reality which transcends our verbal world, where the child touches its own existence without words. That is what the theological question is about.