You must have missed A.N. Wilson and Dr. Antony Flew (google that). My own favorite of several intellectual nonbelieverswho made it all the way through the door into the Household of Faith is my friend at the University of Leeds (UK) who was an atheist philosopher and ethicist for many decades, entering the Catholic Church after long, long reflection and great joy in his late 60's. If you want to communicate with him, let me know and I will get his permission.
CS Lewis (and Anne Rice, as someone else mentioned) are not what I would consider “informed” skeptics.
I was raised in an evangelical home and have read most of Lewis’ work (everything but his academic literary criticism, I think) and he makes some very basic errors with regards to his reasons for rejecting other religions (he completely misconstrued Buddhism, for one) when he went through his period of trying to decide what was true.
What I mean by “informed skeptic” is someone capable of things like arguing both sides of the Kalam, explaining metaphysical vs. methodological naturalism, and so forth.
I’m surprised no one has brought up would-be apologist Josh McDowell.. another self-proclaimed “former atheist” whose hokey pseudo-intellectualism was something I ran into in the years before I ended up rejecting any form of Christianity that would be recognisable as such to a conservative/evangelical type.
The Antony Flew affair is one with which I’m sadly familiar.
Rumours surfaced as to his “conversion” in 2001 - 2004. Rumours which he personally refuted.
Case closed? Not quite..
He stated in 04/05 that he thought abiogenesis, the Kalam, and schroeders improbability arguments had turned him to deism.. a statement which he again retracted later that year, saying he had been “mistaught” by Schroeder, an eminent physicist, and worryingly claimed he could not even recall writing the letter in which he wrote “the kalam cosmological argument is a sound argument.”
He then wrote an article called “my conversion” in Think which is so confused and unclear it makes no real claim for the existence of God at all.
Flew was then paraded around by Christian apologists (Strobel, Habermas, Phillip Johnson etc) who, despite growing evidence that he wasn’t of entirely sound mind, cited his repeatedly contradictory statements on things like abiogenesis and the kalam as some sort of victory.,
He died in 2010 of (surprise!) dementia.
The Flew affair says far more about the craven nature of publicity hungry Christian “apologists” than it does about Flew himself. Unfortunately he never managed to explain in a coherent way what he believed and why and contradicted his own assertions about abiogenesis in the new preface to his book “God and Philosophy.”
A.N. Wilson I’ve never heard of. I appreciate the offer and I’ll respond after doing a bit more research. Thanks!