I rather enjoy long-form internet arguments. They give you time to research, ponder, and give thoughtful responses; it's OK if it takes a while to respond [0]. The thing that makes me anxious is worrying that I won't get any thoughtful responses, and therefore won't have anything worthwhile to think about or wrestle with. So, thank you for keeping up on this.
> "your other point that groups that do terrible things are not Christians"
> "there is actually additional criteria that you are applying to the term that wasn't there before."
That's an inaccurate characterization of my point.
The label "Christian" has been in use for nearly 2000 years (it appears in its Greek and Latin forms in the Bible and other contemporary writings.) For a person to be "Christian", they must be transformed by Christ and therefore must show some of the characteristics of being Christ's disciple. This isn't new content I'm adding; this is all stuff that's talked about in the Bible (I think it's reasonable to consider the Bible authoritative on the subject.)
Now, it's certainly possible for a Christian to be a "work in progress", who shows some signs of transformation in some areas but is severely lacking in others, and who therefore does certain terrible and not-Christ-like things on occasion. But if a person is all terrible, all the time, with no evidence whatsoever of any transformation, they are not Christian (regardless of whether they claim the label.) The Bible talks about this, too -- 2 Peter 2, 2 Corinthians 10-12, and the entire book of Jude argue about those who masquerade as apostles of Christ, but aren't really. It is not a new thing for some people to claim the label but be undeserving of it, and it is not a fallacy to point it out when it happens!
> "the types of claims you and your wife are referring to do merit the same status as out of body experiences."
> "I don't really know how it relates to evidence"
Everything is a form of evidence, including experience. It's all subject to certain forms of scrutiny and certain criteria; how well it holds up determines how strong it is as evidence. Some criteria include the accuracy/credibility of the source (is this person a known liar? Is the lab equipment flaky?), the external verifiability or correctness of the data, the detail with which it is measured and recorded, and so on.
Expereince, both personal and other, can be strong evidence or weak evidence. The only people I've ever heard speaking of UFO abductions have seemed non-credible in other ways, and as such, I consider their reports to be very weak evidence. I've also heard of out-of-body experiences that are vague and don't connect to anything external ("I saw a tunnel and heard a voice mumbling about how it wasn't my time yet"), which are not particularly useful evidence.
I've also heard of more detailed out-of-body experiences where people are able to describe things, in detail, that were happening outside of their immediate vicinity. That's a fairly strong type of evidence because it connects back to something external. Similarly, the experiences I described all connect back to something tangible, and all come from people I know to otherwise be credible, and I therefore consider them strong evidence (but since you don't know either them or me to be credible, you have the option to discard them as weak evidence.)
Given the consistent impressiveness of these experiences, I find them hard to discount; brain malleability, white noise, hallucinations, and ghosts are all woefully inadequate explanations. The only conclusion I can draw is that some intelligence is communicating information with us; I am content to label that intelligence "Yahweh" until it gives me reason to refer to it differently.
> "how absurd it is to think that there is a majority group of Christians out there who want to rationally talk about their beliefs and in any way have them challenged"
This is an unfortunate result of living in a place where the loudmouthed anti-intellectual branch of Christianity is most prevalent. All I can say is that it's not like that everywhere, hasn't been like that for most of history, and definitely isn't like that among theologians.
> "I am of the opinion that the evidence will lead you away from sources that claim to know about the unknowable"
I am of the opinion that most of the things being discussed are not "unknowable". They may be difficult to constrain to a lab, but they can be understood to some degree.
I am also of the opinion that evidence will lead you to wherever the evidence leads, as long as you're willing to follow it. It is intellectually lazy to decide, before looking at the evidence, that it will lead you in some specific direction. Dove and I have looked at a lot of evidence, and ended up where we are right now; do not be too quick to discount that.
When it comes to the history and translation process of the Bible, it's clear you haven't really studied the evidence; it appears you've simply adopted common opinions that conform to your worldview, which themselves come from people who haven't really looked at the evidence (you don't need to read biased Christian sites to get the other side; Wikipedia provides a nice, neutral look at these topics.)
For example, your "copies of copies of translations of copies" comment is an oft-repeated but factually incorrect meme; you would be well served to read about the topic of "textual criticism", and read the introductory page in various Bibles where they describe their own translation process.
Likewise, you stated (in question form) "different Christian denominations have many different versions of the Bible that include and cut out passages". Aside from a few cult groups, I'm not aware of any denomination that has its own version of the Bible. I've seen a good mix of translations in Catholic, Baptist, Mennonite, and non-denominational churches. The difference between the translations is primarily linguistic philosophy -- the reading level they target, whether they focus on word-for-word [1] or phrase-for-phrase translation, how they handle idioms, etc.
Regarding passages that have been "cut out", this goes back to textual criticism; any decent article on the subject will discuss the end of Mark, Luke 22:43-44, John 8, and 1 John 5:7-8. (The NET Bible, available at net.bible.org, has extensive text-critical notes on each of these passages as well.) It's not as though each individual denomination cuts out passages that don't suit them; rather, when the manuscript evidence shows a passage was likely added later, it's put in brackets with a note that says "this probably wasn't original".
Again, you stated (in question form) "the Bible was started many many years after the mericals from Jesus". We have copies of the Old Testament that are older than Jesus; this is not at all in doubt. The evidence points toward the New Testament writings originating between 50 and 70 AD. Notably, none mention the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, which is kind of a big deal. Even ignoring this, many parts of the NT are quoted in letters by Clement of Rome (95 AD) and Polycarp (120 AD), and some fragments from Polycarp's era still exist in museum collections (look up Papyrus 52). This puts the writings within a generation of Jesus' death.
Regardless of what you think of the value or truthfulness of the Bible, the evidence is clear when it comes to its origins and content.
[0] also, Minecraft 1.8 just came out, which has made me even slower to respond. Sorry.
[1] purely word-for-word translations are often written in an "interlinear" style, with the Greek/Hebrew interspersed line-by-line with the English. Since the original language syntax is so different from English, these are difficult to read, but great for studying certain details.
