What I'm hearing here is, "I don't want to talk about religion. But I also have all these things I want to say to religious people. So I do actually want to
talk about it, I just don't want to
hear about it." Some of your things you want to say are questions. Do you actually, genuinely, respectfully want to hear the answers? What are you planning to do when they are, presumably, not the same answers as you have? Tell them what to think, in the same way that you complain they're telling you what to think? I suspect it may well be the case that you don't want to gently introduce any of these questions in order to listen to and attempt to understand the speaker. Instead, you want to wait for them to finish so you can think (or tell them) what a moron they are. Do you think there might be a sliiiight chance that it's reflected in your tone or demeanour, and that might stymie a respectful and interesting discussion?
I mean, if you base your worldview on a book, shouldn't you have read the book? Studied every inch of the book? Understand who wrote the book, and why, and when, and the history of its many translations, and how the book says different things based on the version?
I base many of my worldviews on books that I haven't read. On the Origin of Species. Philosophić Naturalis Principia Mathematica. Relativity: The Special and the General Theory. But I understand the basics and cleverer people than me have told me that they're probably true. There are reams and reams of biblical criticism and exegesis and church teaching. Aquinas's Summa leaps to mind.
"If this guy who has studied this stuff for a life-time can't answer the simplest questions, what does that say for the other members of the church? Do they even think about this stuff?"
I'm glad you managed to have lunch with those two pastors. I'm sorry one of them was so disappointing for you. I wonder if this is a helpful analogy for you.
Imagine someone of average intelligence and life experience tells me that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon in 1969. Oh wow! The moon! I ask them how they did it. They say they flew there. But humans can't fly. No, they went in a rocket, like a giant plane. But planes can only fly so far and can only carry so much fuel before they get too heavy to fly - where did they refuel? Nowhere. What, they flew all the way to the moon on one tank of fuel? I...no...er...yes...um... I start to suspect that maybe this person is winding me up because their rocket story sounds a little far fetched. Hm, I think, I'd better go and talk to someone who's dealt with this stuff all their life. I go to ask a physics teacher. They explain about jettisoning boosters and suchlike, but I'm also wanting to know how they knew where to go - I mean, you can't buy an A-Z of space! And while this physics teacher is great on the basics, advanced space navigation is beyond their capability. After all, they may have a degree in physics generally and teach it to other people all day, but this is some pretty high-level stuff. So I have to go all the way to a university professor of astrophysics before I can find someone who can explain to me how they knew which way to point the rocket - although I've got to admit it's pretty hard to understand because I don't have much knowledge of astrophysics generally and he's not great at explaining it to a relative idiot. It's the teacher who's good at explaining things to people who don't know anything about them. But I came very close to believing the moon landings were fake - and maybe I'm still suspicious because I'm convinced this professor has some kind of agenda. Like, if the moon landings didn't happen (if space doesn't even exist!) then he'd be out of a job, right? So of course he'd perpetuate the moon landing conspiracy. He's got the most to lose here!
Can you see how the average person (bearing in mind that half the world's population is below average) in the street and maybe even the teacher cannot adequately explain something that really happened? And how easy it is, if you're convinced the moon landings didn't happen, to doubt even the word of the expert? And how that might apply to your experience of talking to people about Christianity?
To answer your original question, the problem many people have is conflating Christianity with the kind of obnoxious buttheads who bring it up all the time. I imagine your experience of talking to religious people can feel something like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQbei5JGiT8 You just don't want tea!!! If I were basing my perception of atheists solely on those who specifically brought up their atheism, I would think atheists were absolute arseholes who couldn't fucking shut up about it if their life depended on it and were always all up in my business. So actually, imo, your problem is not with Christians. Your problem is with obnoxious buttheads. It just so happens that the topic in question is Christianity. For obnoxious buttheads of any description, I recommend Captain Awkward:
https://captainawkward.com A basic summary of her advice is blandly don't engage and then move the conversation on. "That's interesting + subject change." If they persist, be more explicit: "I don't want to talk about that + subject change." If they still persist, they are being obnoxious buttheads and they started it so just leave: "I said I didn't want to talk about it + physically walk away." This is applicable to anything people keep going on about like an obnoxious butthead (You should get your hair cut! Have you tried Crossfit?! I'm vegan now!!!) It's OK to set boundaries around your conversation - you just want to avoid being an obnoxious butthead yourself.