I find it difficult to argue here for two reasons. First off, these are big posts Russ, maybe you could try to condense some of your points? Not that my brain can't handle it or anything, but it's easier to respond in logical detail to a few points than to a number of vague ones interspersed with yet more Bible passages that I am not interested in reading. I don't want to take an hour to write a long response and I think people would probably get bored reading it.

Secondly, you claim to have knowledge of the Bible and Christianity far beyond the rest of us. Anything we say is ignorance in your book. We're being duped by conspiracies, we can't see the truth, we don't want to accept God's love, etc. There's no point in trying to tell you otherwise because it isn't going to register. Why are other stories about Horus, Gilgamesh, etc, "silly"? They have undeniable similarities to stories in the Bible. Because you want to believe it was divinely influenced, you deny the very possibility that these stories were passed down from other older cultures and incorporated into the Bible. You also say that Christianity is the only "true" religion. So the other major world religions are all wrong are they? Why? I can accept that Christianity is your chosen path and the thing that resonated most with you. What I find difficult to stomach is when people say they are right and everyone else is wrong, that they are God's chosen people and everyone else is going to end up in hell if they don't follow the "true" path. In my reckoning, humans have existed for thousands of years and have been practising spirituality and rituals of all kinds. They still do today, in an amazing variety of ways that I enjoy learning about. It is the height of hubris to claim that one religion that hasn't existed for long in the grand scope of things, and which a minority of people in the world follow, is the only truth.

Regarding the suffering of people for the greater "good" of a lesson to humanity. No one is innocent, you say. In what way? The idea of original sin messed up my head as a child and I deplore it. I believe in the beauty and potential of humankind, not in our ungodly unworthiness. Can you tell me that the Jews who died in concentration camps weren't "innocent"? What had they done wrong to deserve that, then? Was that OK because they were heathen? Or because God wanted us to be reading in our history books today about the depths that humanity can sink to? I cannot believe in a loving God that would allow such things to happen to ordinary and yes, innocent people. This is the same God, is it, who allows people to be slaughtered in pointless wars, allows babies to be born in hunger-stricken poverty only to die miserably a few days later? You've really got to do some twisting of reality on yourself to square belief in a benevolent God with these things that happen every day.

BTW I didn't like the Christianity part of the video either, though my reasons are perhaps a bit different. My comments are further up in the thread.