I am becoming a Catholic. I was an Atheist once, but I realize now that I have no good reason to disbelieve.
Despite this, a dogged interest in history, myth, psychology and religion kept me butting heads with the Christian belief system. My initial conclusion ended up rather similar to the Meme-ideas of Richard Dawkins; Religious ideas propagated themselves in a society because of evolutionary reasons, because (and this is where Dawkins and I differ) they offer provable advantages for a group of people over other sets of ideas. This says nothing of there truthfulness of course, but it is undeniable that religious people do better on many fronts, compared to less religious people. Atheists are often left out of studies that compare religiosity to health, suicide rates, productivity, socioeconomic status, etc, but a meta-analysis of the data leaves Atheists on a whole - although they do better than somewhat religious people - doing worse than people who are highly religious. These differences are clearly related to religious behavior, far more so than claims to religious belief; the more one prays, goes to church and lives a religious lifestyle, the better one does.
Again, this says nothing of the truth of these religious behaviors, all it does is claim that there is a use for them; most people do better in life when they are religiously active, and it seems to be an overal case of "the more the better".
My first conclusion led me to think that this behavioral-model must somehow supersede a material-model; It seemed to be more important to get your behavioral model correct, than your material, "real", model of the world. It could be the case that someone thrived because his behavioral model was so well put together, that the flaws in his material model were corrected for through a strong ability to deal with setbacks and previously attained success, both material and social. This could explain the rise of Christianity and the fruits of its system; capitalism, abolishment of slavery (if you think the Catholic church aproved of slavery throughout history, prepare to read some of St. Augustine's letters), individuality, international law, equality under the law, etc; Christianity simply got its behavioral model so well tuned that it led to the thriving of the largest group of people ever. The separation of a metaphysical God and his material creation allowed for unlimited inquiry into that creation, resulting in the scientific method, and of we went.
That did not sit entirely well with me. If materialism was right, then we had no free will. Surely such a deep-rooted issue would be detrimental to a behavioral system; reality has to be corrected for at some point. But, clearly, behavior that was based on the existence of free will, thrived.
Now, I can totally understand how this is not a logical conclusion; such a deep-rooted issue did not have to be "detrimental" at all; it is just what kept me searching.
This led me to begin to entertain some ideas about some metaphysical influences. I just started to look into the possibilities. Through some experience with Quantum Physics I knew that there was room for influence at that level; the current ground of reality is one that is fundamentally random, so if people had "Souls" that influenced their material being to the point of free will, this could be the level that it happened at. The "random" quantum state could simply be influenced by something else, outside of the material, and although we could never prove this, we could never prove the opposite either.
So off I went, "I don't know" no longer entirely satiable; religious belief has practical use and there could be some room for it in material reality.
Arguments against the historicity of Jesus? Pretty shaky.
Arguments against Aquinas; Pretty shaky, most often they did not engage with the arguments he was making at all. (Think Bertrand Russel)
Arguments against