Deflective I am not; direct, I try to be. I was a Union Rep for some years and harsh talk doesn't offend me. Simply put, from folks with your perspective, I hear the same, in my opinion, redundant tripe which embellishes an overused elaboration characterizing the Bible as somehow unreliable.
What appears to me to be universally true is that, in the anti-Christian rants, all are leaping over what has become clear to me: sleeping in the twin beds of the twin dynamics of People and Doctrine.
On the first bed, God created all people with free will and the power of choice - to choose whichever bed they want to lay on, that is, whatever we want to think about and whatever opinions we may form from our thinking. So, yes. Therefore, people have made a mess of understanding God, Jesus, and the Bible.
I have no surety as to why you left your Evangelical Church, but a commonality of similar reactions is from some sort of hurt or harm - some grievous disappointment in their Christian experience.
The essence is that the principles that, for example, Jesus taught and were preserved in the Book, have been trampled underfoot by the worldly perspectives of people. Many of my essays strive to correct the misperceptions and misinterpretations found throughout Biblical History. (It is a long, long project.) So, again, it is people getting in the way of God. (And this is reflected throughout Biblical History as well.)
On the second dynamic, there is the problem of doctrinal, sectarian intolerance.
It is my understanding that, over time, religious intellectuals inaugurated several conferences to establish a unified doctrinal position. They all failed to unify each time, because they all had established the verses of Scripture into doctrines - inflexible, intellectual, and indifferent to the interpretation by the Holy Spirit of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. They leaned on their own understanding, which may be what is clouding your view.
God is a living God who is active and wants to be active in people's lives - not as an intellectual exercise, but as a life changing experiential reality. God wants to restore relationships - with one another and with Himself. He is not interested (but perhaps concerned) in our religious beliefs... Again, because we people get in the way of understanding what His perfectly tailored will is for our lives.
Again, a choice.
To illustrate is the Evangelical Church being sidetracked by all of these things, and unfortunately the result is their devolvement into an ill advised adventure into Political persuasions. To be fair, every Denominational Church falls far short of the Gospel, citing membership as Salvation, or "one and done," monotone repetition of the Sinner's Prayer...
But it just ain't so...
Further, this is one of my main points: Intellectual assent can be most likened to the Tower of Babel, of people deciding to build their own Stairway to Heaven, not waiting on God to show them the one and only way: His Way.
God through the hovering Holy Spirit has preserved all the essential precepts of the blueprint of what Mankind is to build upon: the Bible. I think Greek and Hebrew interlinear texts might show you that there is little variation in the message of the texts and more uniformity than you seem to perceive. Again, people get in the way, and it is up to individuals to "rightly divide the word of truth."
I'll give you this, however, something was lost from the KJV in"you all" or "thou" and "ye." A significant misinterpretation resulted, allowing for Peter to become the Pope.
Yet, without the personal experiential element of the Gospel, no one can even begin to conceive how to start a relationship with God or understand the Bible, "spiritually written and spiritually discerned."
"Jesus answered and said to him, 'Truly, truly, I say to you, except anyone be born from above, he is not able to see the kingdom of God.' " - excerpt from John 3, Jesus and Nicodemus, Berean Literal Bible.
So, if a person does not turn from his own understanding and eventually realize he or she needs to turn away from themselves and turn to God, nothing happens but excessive intellectual verbiage and debate. You must experience a new life change allowing room for Jesus.
If you are interested, Patty and I just published on Medium part of our testimonies regarding our personal experiences with God, Jesus, and the Bible.
If your not interested in anything experiential for their subjectivity, and you would prefer a extensive intellectual challenge, here is a site you might be interested in:Confidence in Genesis | John Lennox | 2012 Solas Conference
An afterthought, as I again reread your response, I wanted to ask you if you agree with Pilate's retort, "What is truth?" Also, it is impossible for me to ignore your judgmental "damning" of oh, so many things! And that begs the question, what are your answers to the questions of life? Just curious. And philosophically speaking, I ask, 'If everything is "irrelevant" are you and I also irrelevant? Seems to me like the question posed by the Existentialist Philosophers of the early 20th Century, or the ancient statement, "I think. Therefore, I am."
