Here we go with the dogma... My man, how on earth do you know how the bible was meant to be taken??? Don't you think that is very presumptuous of you?? You claim that its the word of god but within the book there is incest, genocide, racism, slavery, and a host of other questionable social norms.
Well, because. When someone reads the bible, apart from doctrinal interpretation from any specific church there to skew interpretation, the only way to take it is literally. It's simple. When you read the bible, and you don't try to judge what you're reading through the glasses provided to you by any one church's denominational lenses, it becomes incredibly easy. It's easy because the bible is nothing more than a "do this" and a "don't do this" type of book. There's a simplicity about it, that's refreshing. We know not to listen to any one denomination, because they're nothing more than man-made tradition telling us how we should see scripture, when the scripture shows us how we should see scripture.
Regarding the rest of the things you mentioned, I'm sorry you feel that way about it. There really isn't the issues you feel there are. It's a story of a Creator, that is aware that there are wicked entities looking to hurt His people. He gives them instructions on how to overcome these entities, and people that submit and sell themselves out to these entities He destroys, so that all can be saved. Each of those issues would take a lot of time to explain in context, so if you truly do care about the opportunity to learn, regardless of whether or not you feel I have anything I can share with you, mention a specific topic of the many you listed, and I'll explain why the bible justifies itself as a truly loving, and preserving action regarding it, and how it's often taken out of context to appear hateful.
To say that the bible is a book of stories actually helps it in terms of logic and contemporary social acceptance. But when you say its literal then that presents a lot of problems that force you and many others to spend a considerable amount of time trying to justify that claim. For instance, the flood story is scientifically impossible. How could geographically-bound animals like the penguin, koala, kangaroo, etc. make it onto the ark in the Arabian region? To accept this story as fact forces one to deny common sense and logic. And god is an allegory for energy. If he was real then all of the other thousands of gods that mankind claimed to have existed were real too.
I'd disagree that it'd help it in terms of logic. Modern social acceptance for sure though.
It's a story that sounds foolish to the world, so by the standards we've developed over the last stretch of human history, of course it sounds foolish, but it's supposed to
And yes, and no at the same time. The other "gods" that mankind claimed to have existed were real to an extent. They were entities that led them astray, into traditions apart from the truth of God. Their whole purpose was to usurp worship from יהוה or "YHWH". This is why when we study all pantheons from around the world, and throughout history, they are all the same. The same stories, just with different names, all over. Egyptian, Sumerian, Grecian, Roman, Nordic, etc, etc, etc. It's all the same, just with different names. They all had the same purpose, the same symbols (mostly), the same worship customs, the same family structure, the same basic wrongs (incest regarding the same family members), etc. They even almost all (aside from some asian countries) had the same exact constellations, with the same exact stories, but again, different names. The constellation we know as hercules, was known Hebraically speaking, as the Messiah, or Yeshua (Jesus). Things like that, same story, they both killed the serpent or dragon that plagued mankind.