and the scriptures would appear to be debating against each other.
This is certainly true, and is not wrong in itself to think so, since I believe God has written His words on purpose that way. Not to confuse, but to test our faith, and to show us how His own Spirit as well as other believers can guide us into all truth of the Bible.
Many unbelievers in history have tried to prove Bible contradictions, and have never succeeded. Some have even been converted by the Bible, when they were honest with themselves that these are indeed the very words of the one true God. They are too perfectly aligned with one another, for all those men over thousands of years to have written them separately from their own minds.
Some Christians make the error of treating the words of the Bible as just that of 'wise and holy' men. They think one prophet writes, and another apostle reads it, until he thinks he has it perfectly figured out, and then adds some more stuff from his own mind. And then God after the fact picks out what writings He likes most.
Moses declares that nothing the prophets write are from their own minds, which Paul and Peter confirm. All Scripture is by direct inspiration from God's own mouth, and none of it is from the mind and will of any other man on earth, than Jesus.
1 Peter goes so far as to say that the prophets didn't even understand everything they were writing from the Spirit of Christ in them.
The Bible puts it this way: all the prophets and apostles were just the ready pens in the hand of God to write his words, and not their own.
The thousands of denominations are part of people picking which scriptures to believe and explaining away the others.
Picking with Scriptures is not wrong. Picking them out of place and putting them where they don't belong is wrong.
Denominations are only because some Christians pick and choose for themselves some teachings of Bible over others, and so naturally gravitate to that. This is not destructive. It's like colors naturally migrating in the same area to congregate with each other. So long as it is not by purpose of will, then so be it.
The destructive part is only when some people think they have 'found' something special in the Bible all to themselves, so that they begin to judge other Christians by their own special little 'revealed' doctrines and rules. That's especially true with rule making. That's where separatist sects cull themselves off from the rest of the body.
It happens all the time on this forum .....from there the people pick which scripture to believe and try to explain away the other.
It's a right. No one has to believe what anyone else teaches out of the Bible. We all have the Christian Berean right to read the Bible for ourselves.. That includes only believing and following those teachings that we agree with. If we're wrong, then so be it. But I don't have to believe, and especially not obey any doctrine and rule that I do not believe is the Bible. And frankly, it's not hard. Afterall, as you say, all we have to do is read from the Bible itself.
When Paul says to obey leaders in the Churches, he is not talking about bad leaders of nonbiblic doctrine and rule. He qualifies that with only those proven elders, who are looking out for our souls and are indeed preaching exactly what the Bible says, and only that. Like the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
That's also why Paul says not to follow young 2x 4 wanna be ministers, that are still learning how to balance a checkbook and have never done anything successful in their own lives and homes. The Father would not let Jesus launch into full time ministry, until He had also grown in favor with men as well as God. Look at the difference between the verse of His youth and that of a man in Luke 2:39, 52.
Paul says about the Corinthian church at one time, that we are sometimes better off staying home and ministering to each other, rather than going to church and fouling everything up.