Post religious stress disorder

Have you ever heard of anyone trying to disprove the Lord of the Rings? Or Game of Thrones? Aesop's Fables?
I have continued to study the Bible and examine it very carefully, but I have started to ask myself why. I have found numerous contradictions and falsehoods, the worst of which is Matthew 11:25. (Jesus literally thanks God for hiding his message.) So why do I continue down this futile path of studying what I know to be inherently false?
The truth is, I see a lot of others who have transitioned beyond religion that do the same thing.
It has been very difficult to move beyond the religion that I accepted as fact for so long. I'm not even sure I could have comprehended what it's like to not think I have someone in on my every thought. I still see things in an in-between state. I still see both sides of the Christian/non-Christian coin. I can have a conversation with a theist and see how they view things. Maybe it's overactive empathy, but I'm more inclined to think it's the years of thinking that way hanging around in my mind like Matthew McConaughey in Dazed and Confused.
This may be the reason why I have continued to study.
I still need to assure myself of what I know. That the religion I once accepted is false.
Transitioning beyond religion is not just a flip of a switch. It's not an on/off situation, it's a quantum state of being both or neither at the same time. I also think it's something most people will not understand.
In general, I think people prefer to have a stance on one side or another and have trouble being anywhere in the middle because it means they don't fit with either side.
That's where a problem lies for me. In my normal everyday life I don't have to justify where I stand on beliefs, but with my family it won't be that way. In fact, I don't really believe any amount of study on my part will change how they will receive this news. I honestly worry that when I tell them, the news will be met with disappointment. Is it strange that as an adult I still fear disappointing my family?
I think a large part of my studies and even in writing this is exploring my position so when this conversation happens I know where I stand.
I'm losing the drive provided by all this post religious stress disorder though. It gives me hope though, that I won't grow into an old man reading the Odyssey, trying to figure out why I ever really believed it in the first place.

Back to the Bible

If you are a Christian and do not wish to have doubts in your faith, STOP READING NOW. I have no intent of dissuading others from their belief for reasons I will outline later, but in this post I'll be discussing what happened when I looked back to the Bible to see if I was denying absolute truth.
I believed with certainty, before I started down this road, that the Bible was perfect, absolute truth and the word of God. I had a lot of doubts in not believing it. I still had a nagging fear that I might be wrong about everything.... again.
If you've made this transition, I'm sure you know exactly what I'm talking about. A lifetime of thinking one way doesn't change overnight.
It was about a year ago that I went back to the Bible to study. Part of me hoped I would find it as a perfect whole.
But it's not.
The reason why it needs to be perfect is because where ever it is not perfect truth, it is not the word of God. If I can prove some parts are false, what does it say about all the other sections which I cannot verify, parts which could only be verified by being there at the time? Errancy shows that while the Bible may have some great things to say, it's not absolute truth. It proves the Bible is the words of men.
I started by looking into prophecy.
I learned in christian college that prophets who were wrong were stoned to death because it meant they were false prophets. So all prophecy in the Bible should be 100 percent accurate, not just because a prophet said it, but because it is the word of God. So what happens if they aren't all absolute truth?
When I was young, I asked my mom about psychics. Ms. Cleo might have been popular at the time and I wondered how she convinced everyone she knew the future. My mom's reply was that it's easy to convince people you know the future if you speak vaguely because people will look for anything that can be interpreted as the prediction. She also commented that prophets in the Bible were specific and always right which is how we knew they spoke for God.

Ezekial 26

7 “For thus says the Lord God: ‘Behold, I will bring against Tyre from the north Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, king of kings, with horses, with chariots, and with horsemen, and an army with many people. 8 He will slay with the sword your daughter villages in the fields; he will heap up a siege mound against you, build a wall against you, and raise a defense against you. 9 He will direct his battering rams against your walls, and with his axes he will break down your towers.10 Because of the abundance of his horses, their dust will cover you; your walls will shake at the noise of the horsemen, the wagons, and the chariots, when he enters your gates, as men enter a city that has been breached. 11 With the hooves of his horses he will trample all your streets; he will slay your people by the sword, and your strong pillars will fall to the ground. 12 They will plunder your riches and pillage your merchandise; they will break down your walls and destroy your pleasant houses; they will lay your stones, your timber, and your soil in the midst of the water. 13 I will put an end to the sound of your songs, and the sound of your harps shall be heard no more. 14 I will make you like the top of a rock; you shall be a place for spreading nets, and you shall never be rebuilt, for I the Lord have spoken,’ says the Lord God.
This prophecy is pretty darn specific. Nebuchadnezzar is going to destroy Tyre and it's never coming back.
But Tyre was never destroyed and still is an active city to this day.
Now there is A LOT of prophecy in the Bible, and many are accurate in the complete story, so how were they able to make such accurate predictions?
The authors of the New testament were quite familiar with the prophecies of the old testament and looked for opportunities to fulfill them. And if you think it was all on the up and up, check out this verse.

Matthew 2

13 When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.”

14 So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt,15 where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I called my son.”

The 'prophecy' here is from Hosea 11:1 and actually reads:
"When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son."
The passage is very clearly talking about the Israelites exodus from Egypt, not a prediction of future events.
Which brings me to my next point. The easiest way to fulfill a prophecy, is just to write down that it happened.
Belief in all aspects of the Bible require a supreme trust in "historical science" as the creationist community say. You cannot repeat the events and so you must rely on the accuracy of the person that wrote it down. Archaeologists on the other hand rely on hard observable data left behind, like pottery, clay tablets, graves and anything really that tells the story of the past.
It may surprise you to learn that there has been no evidence ever to even suggest that the Jews were enslaved by Egypt outside of the pages of the Bible. A whole generation of people died out in the desert without one grave being left. The Egyptians apparently ate or burned every slave after death so as to hide the truth from us. A whole population which the Egyptians never recorded. There is also no circumstantial evidence such as a large change in population,  an economic downturn or a shortage of workers to help this story along. To be fair, Pharaohs had a lot of power and would try to erase events from the record of their people. Amazingly enough, threes always someone devoted enough to leave something behind for us to find.
How much of the Bible is pure fiction? How much is historically factual?
I feel like this line is pretty blurry and I no longer care enough to try to sort it out. At every turn there is a sham. Don't believe me? What did God make the birds from, dirt or water? Check both stories in Genesis. Why do we need four gospels and is it even possible for all 4 to be completely accurate? If even the gospels, the most crucial evidence of the ministry of Jesus are not important enough for God to inspire accurately, how important was it?
I try to keep in mind that it is so easy to believe the Bible. There are a ton of resources out there from people who support the Bible's claims whole heatedly, and with the best of intentions. They are genuinely concerned for the eternal consequences of your soul and feel genuine sorrow for the perceived grief God feels. The real tragedy is that they simply do not know that the story they are being told is not real. Up until a several months ago I was in that same ark.
If the blind lead the blind...