@LogicFTW

Thank you for your hope in me, I'm returning the favor! I find that a lot of the time what's happening when I start off a conversation like this, and find that everything I say sounds quite ridiculous to the other side, is that we have a very divergent set of initial assumptions. Much of the conversation is usually spent probing those out, so please bear with me. I assure you, I am reasonable, as far I know how to be, but I also assure you that I'm being as honest as I can be. You may not believe what I believe, but you should believe that I believe it, if you follow that, and honesty is a big part of the deal. I know lots of "us" don't practice what we preach. Call me out on it if you see me slipping, I'm very comfortable with that, but it will grease the wheels of the discussion a bit if we don't start out doubting each others motives. That's just an olive branch, though, based on your hopefulness. If it isn't persuasive, that's okay too, I think I'll be able to prove my earnestness in this discussion out in time. You all may think I'm an idiot by the end of it, but I'll be an honest idiot!

To your points, though, I do not wish to represent that initial post as what many in christian circles refer to as my "testimony", that information is merely background, for the benefit of those who wish to discuss things with me, to ward off certain stereotypes that are unhelpful to real understanding. I just wanted to assure anyone who read it that I'm not some country bumpkin who ain't never learnt nothin', nor am I a trained-from-birth ask-no-questions zombie christian on a mission to spray the gospel. The near misses I had were integral in my conversion, but my interest prophecy only came much later. I submitted the prophecy in the category of "evidence", to show that I am at least vaguely aware of the demands the users of this site will like to make on someone who has religious belief -- nobody here is a fan of magical thinking. My own conversion took place through a lot of internal wrestling with philosophy (I've got reading under my belt from Plato to Wittgenstein, and I find that I'm a bit of a natural born fan of good old fashioned American pragmatism), and if you'd like to explore that, I'm certainly willing to.

I also see that I'm probably going to have to spend a lot of time defining my terms, or figuring out what the appropriate terms are to use with this group. I'll start with "denominational". In my parlance, this is referencing named organizational divisions within christianity. I do indeed hold to a set of doctrines that differs from many other christians (to do otherwise is quite impossible these days), and therefor obviously other religions, but where "denominational" christians will typically avoid worshipping with christians who go to churches with the wrong names on the sign, or with slightly different doctrines or even liturgies, I have a much more basic approach to determining who I consider to be my "brother in Christ" as we say, and who I will worship with and how. This leads to me being comfortable in many doctrinal and liturgical settings that make more rigid christians squirm, but I find it also leads to a much more consistent practice. After all, the chaos in the christian world is a well-earned point of ridicule that many outside it use frequently, in my experience. All that, in short, I am calling "non-denominational". If there's a more appropriate term for that to use with this group, I will gladly adapt my language.

To point number 1:
I have done quite a bit of reading on the topic of textual transmission, because the reliability of the source material is indeed of paramount importance. As you note, the relevant texts include some 40 authors across roughly 1500 years, and in particular even the text itself records events where it needed to be recovered, such as during the reign of Josiah when it was rediscovered after some time of disuse, and with the Babylonian exile, when much of the original language material did not survive, but was eventually reproduced in a Greek translation. Interestingly, many modern scholars doing textual criticism of the New Testament note that it appears that the NT authors quote almost exclusively from that Greek translation (called the Septuagint), and that there are places where the text of the Septuagint disagrees slightly with the Masoretic texts (the oldest complete Hebrew tradition we have). Also interestingly, we have found some instances (such as in Hebrews 4) where the disagreement was settled in favor of the Septuagint by fragmentary evidence from older Hebrew traditions, such as the famous Dead Sea Scrolls. Much of this is very modern development, as the science of textual criticism hasn't yet reached its heyday, with things like CBGM producing further improvements in the fidelity of the text year by year. You may be surprised to learn that the modern day Greek and Hebrew manuscripts have been transmitted to the present time with an incredible degree of accuracy through this critical lens. We have information on hundreds of thousands of textual variants that have been produced in copies of the New Testament alone through the years, but interestingly we have found that these have not compounded each other, because the mode of transmission since the time of the NT writers has been highly decentralized, excepting the Latin Vulgate text (blame Catholicism is a fun game, too). People have always been making lots of copies and comparing them to each other, in short, and this has resulted in a very high fidelity in the major translations of the day, at least back to around 200 BCE. Of those variants that we have detected within major transmission paths, it turns out that not a single one has a meaningful impact on any doctrine to any given reader. A Roman Catholic reading both variants will interpret either one the same way, as will a Southern Baptist, an Eastern Orthodox, or even probably an atheist. Yes, this isn't the standard of absolute perfection in transmission, since it's hard to say what may have happened before 200 BCE, but it's quite a bit better than most people realize. Disclaimer: I'm by no means an expert in this field, although I am acquainted with the operating concepts. This one goes very, very far into the weeds if we do end up pursuing it, and I may not be able to give adequate explanations. This is, however, what I understand at a very general level.

As for plagiarism and contradiction within the text, I'd be interested to know which examples you're pointing to. I have also spent quite a bit of time grappling with what I perceived to be contradictions, and have so far found satisfactory resolutions to all of them that I have encountered. I am aware of at least two stories from the Old Testament that have seen major claims of plagiarism from extrabiblical sources, but I am not sure whether this is what you're referring to with that term. I am happy to discuss it, though.

To point number 2:
Indeed, this is my first evidence, although what we mean by "primary" may cause me to say it is not my primary evidence. And it's important, to me at least, that we distinguish "evidence" from "proof", and both of those from "argumentation". For example, I mentioned that my conversion revolved mostly around philosophy, but I would never present that as evidence, nor should anyone accept it as such. It certainly constitutes argumentation, but evidence has to have certain characteristics, such as something like measurability. In terms of whether these prophecies are measurable in certain ways, we can reliably establish a minimum age for them, and we can reliably establish the historicity of certain events to which they refer (if interpreted to infer to those). Whether those interpretations are valid will determine the quality of the evidence, and so this group may ultimately hold this evidence to be of very low quality, but that's okay with me. My intention with these two prophecies is to get over the "no evidence whatsoever" hurdle, to show you all that I'm participating in the process objectively and in good faith (ha), so I'll live with "extremely weak evidence" for now if that's what I can get. It certainly isn't the only thing I would consider evidence, and I certainly understand that science has produced tremendous amounts of evidence that refutes mine. One of the things that you may find unusual about me is that I understand very well that my position does not win on this kind of evidence -- and I admit it! Still, evidence is a currency of argumentation that I sense this community values highly, so I will respect it and do my best. In my opinion, we're not fully exploring an issue when either side refuses to engage on anything. That's pretty important when striving for objectivity, in my opinion.

Also in this point, and related, is the common contest between charismatic christian traditions and the secular world over whether or not miracles do continue to happen. The charismatic position is often a very difficult one to overcome for those of us who like to remain rational in our beliefs (or non-beliefs), because experience is incredibly hard to argue with, and people can indeed have very real experiences that leave absolutely no evidence. Whether that's because they are truly magic miracles, tricks of the memory, or outright stark raving mad hallucinations is very difficult to say, but ultimately this argument boils back down to "there's no evidence," or rather "that can't be confirmed with the scientific method." I'm with you, there. I am not aware of any magic miracles that are ongoing or even what we'd consider recent, and personally I don't think a rational understanding of the text of the bible even supports those who say that phenomenally miraculous supernatural things are still occurring (and there are very many people who say so, oddly, just look at the Catholics again). But operating within the assumption that these unprovable-undisprovable things aren't, in fact, happening, you rightly note that we are left with the question of "why?" If God used to do those things all the time, why did He stop?

There's quite a bit of wrangling over this in the christian world today, with the global Pentecostal movement pitted in a three way battle with the Catholics and the majority of orthodox Reformed groups as to whether, why, how much, when, where, and other details about miraculous goings-on, but what is called the "cessationist" view held almost entirely by the Reformed side does contain what I consider to be a self-consistent explanation for their absence. It goes roughly like this: God gave supernatural miracles to His prophets and apostles to authenticate their revelation as being divinely inspired. At the completion of the New Testament, God had finished giving His completed revelation "once for all", as it says in Jude 3, and so has since ceased doing flashy miracles in the sight of men so that nobody else can make any provable claim to having divine revelation. I think we all agree, nobody walking around these days claiming to speak directly for God has any legs to stand on, so there's at least that. Anyways, I like this explanation a lot, and I have found it to be very consistent with what is said about and around the flashy miracles described all over the bible. It isn't likely to be satisfying to anyone who doesn't already believe, however, and I recognize that, because it more or less miraculously sidesteps the real issue: people who don't believe this stuff pretty much base their beliefs entirely on evidence and repeatability, and this doesn't even attempt to provide that. Still, I put it forth to offer something of a little "justification of God", if I may be so bold. Sometimes this argument "why doesn't God act" or "why does God act in this way or that way" is a moral argument, or an argument against what is perceived to be unreasonable behavior. This gives God "an out" for those, if you will. (As an aside, see? I can play outside the presuppositional pool.)

To point number 3:
It's an interesting thought experiment you're proposing, and beneath it is a central question of faith as well that leads people in all sorts of directions, even atheism: why should we believe (or not) what we do (or don't)? Here I will take a page from Wittgenstein, in his notes "On Certainty", where he says, "At the end of reasons comes persuasion." That guy had an IQ of 195, too. To directly answer your question, given what I understand about the bible, your book would have to be very very persuasive for me to join your religion, but I won't say there's no conceivable scenario where that could be made to be the case. I'll go out on a limb and say I don't think you'll find one, though. Fundamentally, there's actually a pretty fine line between where I'm at and where many atheists are at, which is a pretty spectacular thing, and you're sort of plucking at it right now, but it boils down to whether we allow ourselves to form important beliefs on the basis of something other than absolute proof and, if we do, what that something is. A common cry among the religious climate deniers, for instance, notes that anthropogenic global warming is accepted as a major behavior-motivating scientific fact on par with theories that are simply on a higher plane of repeatability and evidence. As an example, you believe it's bad to jump off of a building because gravity will cause you to fall and get hurt, and you're in your right mind to believe that, because you can test whether gravity exists at any time, and indeed you test it all the time. The evidence for it is undeniable, it's all around us, and we spend a great deal of energy as a society on mitigating the risks the phenomenon of gravity poses: things falling off of things and/or onto other things. Now there's plenty of evidence for global warming, and even good evidence that it is anthropogenic in nature, but when you get down to what the nature of that evidence is, it's still entirely statistical correlation. Indeed, it has to be, because there's nothing repeatably testable about it, we can't go get another Earth, pump up the greenhouse gas, and watch it warm. We can see other warm planets and measure things about their atmospheres and compare them to ours, do experiments in actual greenhouses, whatever we like, but the theory on a global scale falls short of that repeatability threshold, even still. We understand the concept of the mechanism, we have good data for modeling, but there's just nothing we can do to actually test it. But, even given that disparity, we reduce our carbon footprint and regulate emissions of everything and even sort our garbage; it's a very large effort to stave off the heat. And we don't do it because we're hedging our bets, you can look around and plainly tell that people believe their inefficient engines and microwave ovens and other things are warming the planet. People get off in the weeds at this point about whether or not it's actually going on, but that's not material to this discussion, you can just assume at this point that I believe exactly what you do about global warming and man's role in it, I'm cool (or warm) with that, the interesting part I'm pointing out is how we form the belief. Similar things can be said about things like dating the age of the universe or the planet, or evolution (CREATIONISM WARNING). We have really powerfully explanatory science being done in these fields, but there's nothing we can do to cause and observe another big bang, or the formation of our planet, or the evolution of an eyeball from creatures that originate in an amino acid solution, even if only because we're not likely to live long enough to see the results. All of us ultimately do believe something that we can't absolutely prove, even adherents of solipsism and nihilism (I should know). Now, with regards to the age of the planet and the origin of species, you can't assume that I believe exactly what you do, but that's not because I deny what's going on in science -- it's because I've found a different basis for forming beliefs, and the beliefs that I have formed force me to accept that the miniscule probability that the evidence of science is pointing in the wrong direction on these issues is in fact the case. That's the big gulf between where I was and where I am. I used to consider it obvious that the preponderance of the evidence prevails in determining what's true, and that everything else is false, no exceptions. Evidence:Belief::No Evidence:No Belief. Today, that is not such a rigid construct for me. We can explore that, if you'd like, but I'm not sure what the word limit is here, so I'll leave that for another post if you're interested. It's where I start to really get into philosophy.

To point number 4:
I think that every letter of the 66 books of the commonly accepted reformed canon of scripture are 100% factually correct in their original languages. This includes Isaiah and Psalms. So that you won't think this answer is a cop-out to hide behind translation and interpretation, I believe that the historical events described in the books did factually occur as described even in modern translations into English, and that the translation from the original languages into English has not impacted the doctrinal content of the work in any way. Disclaimer: much of the Old Testament is written in various forms of Hebrew song and poetry, and the authors of those sections have definitely taken license in places of various poetic techniques, such as metaphors and allegories. Much of the Old and New Testaments are also written in the vernacular forms of their contemporary languages, and as such also contain idioms that translate very poorly because they have no near-equivalent phraseology in modern English (fun example: Exodus 23:19). Lots of these result in people claiming contradictions, but I don't think those have a fair basis, and I believe that reasonably supported edifying explanations exist for all of them that are consistent with the rest of scripture. This is not, however, the "that doesn't mean what it says" defense. I will not hide behind metaphor and allegory when you want to talk about the flood, or the seven days of creation, or Moses parting the sea, or the walls of Jericho, or Jonah and the whale, or the guys who lived for hundreds of years, or any other description of an event relayed in a historical fashion, or even something asserted in a poetic section of the work in a factual manner. Those things happened just like it says they did. I think that's pretty fair. Let's do this!