If you found "mere christianity" thought provoking, it is also worth reading such as Chesterton several books eg "orthodoxy" who makes profound observations on how the world leads him to christianity, and ultimately catholicism.
As a scientist -one time quantum physicist I have nothing but contempt for such as Dawkins - he goes way beyond his sphere of understanding, into such as quantum chemistry, and his arguments are often hopelessly flawed by his own misunderstanding but by aiming his conclusions at "the public" he knows few can challenge him, so he can present his a priori world view as though it was the verdict of science.. The problem is the hall of science presumes that the world is deterministic:, that is , progresses only because of present state and laws ( which even science disagrees with!) , and that consciousness is a chemical process, and life is a chemical accident then filters all it sees with that paradigm. It then guards what it "allows in" by whether it conforms to the paradigm.
You only have to see how Dawkins reacts to (for example) slamdunk evidence on telepathy (which incidentally is beyond reasonable doubt, the question is how, not whether) - he apriori tries to debunk it, without even arguing on the evidence. Because It doesnt fit his worldview. And that is the antithesis of science.
Consider the following: about philosophy of science.
Start with what I call sagans folly. "extra ordinary claims need extraordinary evidence" which is a rallying cry of scientific relativism and atheism. It is also the antithesis of science, because the word "extraordinary" is totally subjective and is used as a bar to raise against evidence that does not fit your world view. The truth is an experimental correlation exists or it does not. You can aim to eliminate variables but in the end however extraordinary it is , and whether or not you can "explain it" more of that word later - it exists.. The evidence stands either in conformity or defiance of your world view.
That leads on to what is science anyway? And the answer can only be, it is a model of patterns that are observed to repeat or are repeatable in the universe, and a process for adding to that model. In essence nothing is ever "explained" except in the context of that model.
But the model is not the same as the universe. So what is an electron? the answer is an elegant bit of math, that helps with matching pattersn of observation. Indeed go deepeer and you find there are several models of electrons. The classical actually disagree with the quantum, and you have to know which to use. Hawking admitted this in one of his last books with the concept of "model dependent reality" which concluded that there was no unique model (and thereofer theory of everything) - that several contradictory models existed for phenomena, and you had to know which to use!
In saying he destroyed the idea that the models are explanation of the universe, only how it behaves.
He dealt a blow to the "paradigm".
Quantum physics deals a blow to the idea of a deterministic universe anyway. Concluding "it does not exist till observed" and the philosophical problems with that are profound. A killer blow to the paradigm.
A leading british quantum physicist said it was an embarassment, that quantum physics still had no rational explanation or indeed consensus on such as copenhagen interpretation (of whcih einstein said "I refuse to believe the moon does not exist till I look at it" but even he was forced to conclude that was true/
Dawkins will say "i will believe it when I see peer reviewed repeats" knowing that
1/ Journals are limited in wht they allow in.
2/ The peers are like him, who will not allow in what they disagree with
3/ YOu cannot get funding for repeats, and even if you do, no journal will ever publish a repeat!
Point is...no "real science" passes the test that he gives things he does not like. Particularly 3! So Dawkinsian establishment keeps out all it does not like!
Hence he can ignore (eg telepathy) since he manages to keep it out.
Of course the way out of the mess of scienctists own creation is simple.
For as long as you accept that science is only a model. It explains nothing except likely observation but has little to say about what the world is, only what it does, all the philosophical problems disappear.
But then the "god of the gaps" argument dies with it.
There is then NO explaination for the world. And neither has science challenged God.
And the more I saw of deep sceince, the more I concluded that was true.
Now look at some of the fascinating forensic evidence. Like... the forensics of eucharistic miracles, and you start to wonder.. See white cells that should not exist in Vitro, that Darwin says prove his own theory is false! Life from inert, not from small change.....
I'm a 32-year-old guy who spent roughly 32 years as an atheist. And not just any atheist.... for most of this time (especially in my teens!) I was the very obnoxious kind, the one who read Dawkins and Hitchens and took delight in trolling boards like this very own with the same old arguments I'm sure you've all seen a thousand times before.
But now? Now I find myself.... extremely confused and more than a little terrified. The proximate cause was a series of books I read over the last couple months: The (extremely profane) novels of Michel Houellebecq which first began cementing in my mind the emptiness and hopelessness of the atheist/materialist mindset, and this was shortly followed (by pure chance!) with Elizabeth Prentiss's Stepping Heavenward, which expounded on the benefits and comforts of Christianity in a way I hadn't ever experienced before. And it was shortly after that I read the big--and more common!--one: CS Lewis's Mere Christianity. For the first time, the world began to make sense: what before seemed full of chaos and despair suddenly became orderly and hopeful. For the first time in my life I have begun reading the Bible with an open mind and an open heart.
And.....that's where I am at now. (This has all been very, very sudden.) I am in the position of the man who oh so desperately wishes to believe in Christ, but whose lifelong background in "rationalism" is making such a conversion very, very hard.
(This was all copied form the Introduction thread--sorry! This next part is new though!)
I suppose I will zero in on the current specific issues I am having, though I urge you to consider this within the wider context of my biography:
One part of Lewis that hit me especially hard was the section on Christian marriage. Specifically, the realization that the Vow to "love" one another isn't describing the "feeling" of love--it's describing the decision to love, the active choice every single day to value and respect your spouse and your family. (Indeed, we can't promise to always experience the feeling of love towards our spouse, no more than we can promise to never have a the feeling of a headache.)
And... up until recently, I've always understood Faith to be a "feeling." That Christians do not make the active decision to (I will phrase this very delicately, as I do not mean to offend) set their traditional reasoning abilities aside and accept Christ into their hearts; rather, it's a "feeling" they have, a "feeling" that Christ is with them and wants them to accept Him.
Which one is closer to how actual Christians feel?
(Perhaps a specific example will clear things up: in Mere Christianity, CS Lewis employs his famous "Lord, Liar or Lunatic" argument to explain why he believes that Christ was literally the Son of God. Now, when I read that, I find his argument to be logically unsound--poor, and unconvincing. However, of course, to be a Christian (which, again, is something I desperately want) I would need to get past these mental roadblocks. Can I just say "No, I will make the decision to ignore these misgivings, and accept Christ on faith" or is this terrible theology (and worse psychology)? And if that's not the answer....then what is?
So: How can I get past this? How can I get to Christ from my current miserable state?