If you pray, can you misquote Jesus?

Wow. The response to this has been amazing - thank you all very much for your answers. Unfortunately I cannot answer everyone personally, so this is a global response.

It was very interesting to read all of your answers. I feel that I should clarify that I am not looking for God for myself. If I had a strong desire to find him, I know that I could very easily - it is easy to believe something that you want to believe. The reason I ask these questions is because I wish to understand why people believe. It is possible that through your responses I shall become a believer, for I am not closed to the idea. I just need reasons that convince me to believe.

The most prominent thing in your answers was the comment that I had a fundamental misunderstanding of the Gospel. I do not take this as a criticism, and I admit that I was wrong. I thought that much of the importance of Christianity was based around a Christian community. In this Christian community, everyone was to 'act like a Christian' - be helpful to others, not sin, love thy neighbor etc... I naturally assumed that access to heaven was granted a) through belief, and b) through goodness. Most of you pointed out that you do not 'earn' access to heaven. Indeed, it would be impossible for a mere human. Instead, we should pray for forgiveness for our sins, and God will forgive. I admit that this poses me a problem (and not only because heaven will include a child rapist who asked for forgiveness whilst an innocent, lovely child with parents from a different religion burns in hell). Imagine you tell a child that no matter how hard they work, they shall fail a class. You then tell them that you shall let them go into the class above anyway, but only if they truly regret being unable to pass on merit. Do you think the child will be motivated to work despite guaranteed failure?

Another thing I found very interesting in your comments about the Da Vinci Code, is that they were all so different (some said that it held no importance to those who were secure with their faith whilst others said it was an insult to all of Christianity), and yet all of you agreed on one thing - pure fiction. I agree 100% with this. However, if we take into account my comments above, it is perfectly conceivable that someone can believe in every word in the book and still be a Christian (the characters in the book are). Indeed, as long as they pray for their sins, they go to heaven. I therefore ask this - does God forgive sins even if we don't realise we are committing them, if we pray for forgiveness? Also, are being a Chritian and going to heaven essentially unrelated? To go to heaven, you must pray for forgiveness. Isn't there a lot more in being a Christian? Would you call the man who believes in the book but prays a real Christian?

Thirdly, about my comments on the bible changing. I anticipated that you would answer in the way you all did - 'what are your sources', 'it is not true', 'plenty of evidence to the contrary'. Let me reassure you that I am not one to believe something with no evidence. I did not believe the survey when I read it (although I did accept it was possible; see Bart Ehrman's 'Misquoting Jesus'). I planned to use this to illustrate a point. Instead of directly answering my question, you pointed out that the question itself was flawed. The question was based on my reading of a book which was based on some historical evidence. I believed (or pretended to) in what the book said. How is this different to the bible? How do you know it is the word of God? As you can see from my example, believing blindly in a book because someone told you it was true. Have you looked up all different historical evidence, analysing each in an objective way? Those who have done have come to different conclusions. What makes you believe unconditionally in the bible, but not in 'Misquoting Jesus'?