The NT texts we have today were written decades after the events they portray
True of the gospels, certainly.
and only one testiment (Paul's IIRC) was written by the man himself while he was an old and sick man.
Paul didn't write a testament (or a gospel): he wrote letters, or epistles as they're called. The authentically Pauline letters are generally believed to have been written in his lifetime :-) and the earliest (1 Thessalonians, around 50 AD) pre-dated the writing of the gospels.
what went into those collations was in flux until late in the 4th century AD
Well, yes and no: some stuff was always going to be in because everyone accepted that someone important in the very early church had written it. That said, it's worth asking how we know that Hebrews is meant to be in and 1 Clement isn't, for example.
how often the poetics won in order to make the texts more appealing to English readers and particularly more useful to clergy preaching from the KJV.
This isn't really relevant to the integrity of the Greek texts or the accuracy of the Greek originals, though. Almost everyone knows the KJV isn't a great translations (bar some bonkers Americans who think it was itself inspired by God or something). Better translations are available.
You do find eager atheists over-egging the pudding a bit with regard to both the transmission and accuracy of the NT (or rather, the lack thereof): I don't see any particular reason to treat it differently from other ancient documents or sacred texts: we're likely to have a fair bit of the original text with some interpolations, and the original authors probably made some stuff up. Herodotus is pretty reliable but also writes about dragons. I don't believe in those either: Hume's argument will do on its own, just as it will for resurrections (and zombies coming out of their tombs to accompany Jesus's own resurrection), water into wine, angelic visitations, talking snakes and all the rest.
In general, educated Christians are going to call atheists on their special pleading when dealing with the Bible. A better response than using that sort of pleading is to call Christians on their own: the NT stories are worse evidence than the evidence for a lot of other guff that Christians mostly don't believe. This seems to have been Chris Hallquist's approach, though I haven't read his book.
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True of the gospels, certainly.
and only one testiment (Paul's IIRC) was written by the man himself while he was an old and sick man.
Paul didn't write a testament (or a gospel): he wrote letters, or epistles as they're called. The authentically Pauline letters are generally believed to have been written in his lifetime :-) and the earliest (1 Thessalonians, around 50 AD) pre-dated the writing of the gospels.
what went into those collations was in flux until late in the 4th century AD
Well, yes and no: some stuff was always going to be in because everyone accepted that someone important in the very early church had written it. That said, it's worth asking how we know that Hebrews is meant to be in and 1 Clement isn't, for example.
how often the poetics won in order to make the texts more appealing to English readers and particularly more useful to clergy preaching from the KJV.
This isn't really relevant to the integrity of the Greek texts or the accuracy of the Greek originals, though. Almost everyone knows the KJV isn't a great translations (bar some bonkers Americans who think it was itself inspired by God or something). Better translations are available.
You do find eager atheists over-egging the pudding a bit with regard to both the transmission and accuracy of the NT (or rather, the lack thereof): I don't see any particular reason to treat it differently from other ancient documents or sacred texts: we're likely to have a fair bit of the original text with some interpolations, and the original authors probably made some stuff up. Herodotus is pretty reliable but also writes about dragons. I don't believe in those either: Hume's argument will do on its own, just as it will for resurrections (and zombies coming out of their tombs to accompany Jesus's own resurrection), water into wine, angelic visitations, talking snakes and all the rest.
In general, educated Christians are going to call atheists on their special pleading when dealing with the Bible. A better response than using that sort of pleading is to call Christians on their own: the NT stories are worse evidence than the evidence for a lot of other guff that Christians mostly don't believe. This seems to have been Chris Hallquist's approach, though I haven't read his book.