Lest we all forget, the Bible as we know it was written some 2000 years ago. This book was/is actually a combination of 66 entirely differen't books written over a fairly large amount of time. (This is not theory). The Bible wasn't just whooped up over night (like a few other religious documents I'll leave nameless) by a single guy. It's a pretty cool story (and I won't even get started on the Apocrypha)
King James had the base of what most of us consider the modern bible translated in the...err...17th century? The date escapes me. Anyway, translated from Greek, Latin, Hebrew and a few other languages. James also sought to keep the translation as un-biased as possible by ensuring those doing the translatING were made up of a mix of differen't...hmm...lets call it "doctrines". I believe there may even have been an athiest or two involved. Anyhow, this is a remarkable book to say the least. Christian or atheist, I recommend taking a class to study the book in a non-religious format (as I did, it was way more revealing than sitting in church).
Anyhow, the Bible IMHO was written to/for a bunch of people (the world) who were considerably less educated than we were. However, I would not want to try to survive in thier world (when survival is #1 just imagine how education changes). Add this to the FACT that the Bible was written as a standard, warning, AND as a prediction (ok...Jews please be nice) of the return of Jesus Christ preceding the end of the world as we still know it. Now, consider this...a book written for people with a considerably lower level of education / knowledge, BY a bunch of people who expected the return of J.C. and the end of the world to happen in 200yrs TOPS. It works out to be a fairly good "Ok do this, live this way OR you will suffer miserably for eternity" story. It worked fairly well.
I think the Bible has merit...is worth much more regard than offered by your modern "I know everything" athiest/evolutionist (no offense) who on 9 out of 10 occasions have never bothered to crack the book open let alone try to figure out what it means. On the other hand ....I'm not entirely sure the actual stories and meaning are getting to us today.