PS: Your camera got a cousin for Mother’s Day.

I am a software developer who used to work with your brother, Peter.

Like you, I was raised in a Christian home. After completing college, I was agnostic, feeling unconvinced that I had good reason to believe in the existence of God. I read Mere Christianity and scribbled out arguments against Lewis’ points. But, in the end, I like to say Lewis won the argument. I didn’t think all his points were valid. But overall I thought he made a very compelling case. (And anyone who reads him can certainly tell he had a brilliant mind.) I’m not sure you accurately understood his argument, because it entail more than you summarized. You might consider re-reading the first part of the book.

From what I recall, one point I found particularly persuasive was the existence of morality, and that regardless of the details of any particular moral system, people instinctively know of and understand the concept of morality. Like most words, “morality” is a label for a thing we already know about “from the inside.”

If one denies that there is any basis for the idea that man “ought” to be moral, then it becomes pretty hard to make heads or tails of most of life. For instance, why does torture offend you? Why do you value living matter over non-living matter, or think that certain types of living matter has “rights,” and others don’t (e.g. humans vs. bacteria)?

This, as well as the intelligent design argument, make me conclude that some para-material realm does indeed exist. (The presence of minds and consciousness is an example of this.)

I would recommend to you the short book There Is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind by Antony Flew.

I disagree with your mom in a sense. Many people use the word faith to mean blind faith, and view it as a virtue. I don’t see it that way. I have “faith” in theism in the sense that I trust it to be true because, after thinking about it, I have concluded that it is the most likely explanation for the way things are. You may have a similar “faith” in atheism. But I have seen that some people in both camps place their “faith” in one place or the other based upon a distaste for the implications of its opposite — for instance, feeling rebellious against the idea that morality (especially private morality), or social pressure against being outside of the church one grew up in. I don’t think I approached the question with a bias either way. I just wanted to know the truth about the way things really are.

And, at the risk of offending since I am a first time commenter, mom is always right.