The Bible is Obscure
The best example of how this is blatantly wrong is in the Book of Daniel. For the very beginning, this book is about how God gives us knowledge and clarity as Daniel gains the king's favor by explaining the meaning of a dream the king had been given. In the later half of the book Daniel has a series of visions which are beyond his understanding, but each one is followed up by a simple and understandable explanation from God, usually delivered by an angel. In addition to these visions, the Bible also makes of point of explaining why many of the people portrayed in it have the names they do, why God does some things or allows things to happen (for example, God hardens Pharoah's heart in order to display His wonders and ensure that the Hebrews leave Egypt entirely instead of simply going into the desert to worship, Satan is allowed to torment Job so that Job's faithfulness can be proved, and the Jews are scattered in order to be disciplined), and what certain symbolic actions or ceremonies mean.
Skeptics also make this claim about the laws of the Bible, and while many laws are not explained (sometimes because they are so basic they do not need explaining) there are still many that are. The New Testament is a good place to look for learning how to understand the Law, especially in the teachings of Jesus and the writings of Paul. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus explains the basic essences of the major laws, and the two greatest commandments He tells the Pharisees of explain the essence of the Law as a whole.
The Old Testament God is Too Harsh and the Ideas of the New Testament are Inconsistent
Firstly, if you actually read the Old Testament with an open heart you will be surprised at how merciful God is. When Cain was sent into exile, he was given a mark so that everyone would know God loved him. Jacob was extremely sinful and deceptive, but God forgave him and gave him the name of Israel along with a nation to bear that name. The Hebrews whom God delivered out of slavery with quite possibly the most astonishing and spectacular series of miracles in history complained that they had been led out of Egypt to starve in the desert, built pagan idols to worship when Moses was up on the mountain for too long, and backed out of their inheritance because they feared big soldiers more than they trusted God, and the Lord still kept heaping blessings on these people.
There are still many bloody parts of the Old Testament, but in reading them we must realize four things. Firstly, we have to realize that we live in a post-pagan world; our views on how to properly treat one another, love for the less fortunate, and ethics in general have all been shaped by Christian doctrine. In other words, when we imagine the people who were put to death in the Old Testament, a decent, average person is not the image that should come to mind. In fact, even the decency of the modern world is a moral sham; Nazi Germany was filled with decent people. Secondly, we have to understand how tribal the ancient world was. The reason that many enemies of the Jews were judged as a people was that they were, in fact, very unified by their ethnicity and in that respect "innocent" parties were both responsible for the behavior of their kin and were almost certain to avenge any judgement carried out against those kin, leading to endless, bloody feuds (in fact, this precise process is at the root of many biblical conflicts). Thirdly, God is not just a really good person who happens to have infinite power, but is rather the source of all goodness and worth. I won't go into detail on this, but basically when we ask what our purpose is, the only answer that works is God; if someone has turned away from the ultimate purpose of their life and everything else (and no, we are not good enough to be our own reason for existence, otherwise we wouldn't keep asking what our purpose is) what value do they really have? Plato is a good source to learn more about this characteristic of God. Finally, we must keep in mind that every time God commands the deaths of either those who turn away from Him or the enemies of the Israelites, He is doing it to set the stage for the coming of Messiah, whose life and death are the ultimate demonstration of God's love.
In regards to claims that the love of the New Testament is inconsistent with the rigidity of the Old Testament, there is the simple fact that both parts of the Bible have more of the quality frequently attributed to the other part than is widely believed. In the Old Testament, God frequently extends forgiveness to those who do not by any means deserve it, while in the New Testament, Jesus and the Apostles are very strict concerning the behavior of believers. In fact, while we tend to think of love and judgement as being totally separate, the topic about which the New Testament is actually most strict is love. We are commanded to submit with humble love to one another, to love our enemies, and to go out of our way to show love and grace for one another.
Jesus was a Hippie
Jesus was not a Hippie, primarily because the love of Hippies is an easy love. Hippies treat human beings as being their own moral authorities (except when their behavior directly harms others or goes against Hippie philosophy) and hold that everyone is really good deep down. Jesus, on the other hand, upheld a shockingly high moral standard (to look at a woman lustfully is adultery, love your enemies, do not swear oaths at all but simply stand by what you say, etc) and taught that we are all sinners who have rebelled against God. In other words, Jesus held that we absolutely do not deserve love but He still gave it away freely and delightfully. Morever, Jesus also rebuked his disciples quite sternly at times ("Get behind me Satan!") and on one occasion went absolutely beserk at the sight of what He deemed a desecration of the Temple. In fact, Jesus was so terrifying that when Legion saw Him approach he immediately surrendered and begged for mercy.
The Bible is Just Metaphorical
There are certain parts of the Bible that can be taken as metaphorical, such as the story of Creation for instance, but even in those cases critics must remember that to say something is a metaphor is not to say that it means nothing and most of the time the really controversial issues remain. More importantly, most of the Bible is clearly not written metaphorically but is written as historical accounts. Secularists may debate whether or not those accounts are accurate, but unless they can give good reasons as to why a particular passage was intended metaphorically and not literally, the intentions behind those accounts are another matter entirely. This is especially true when dealing with well-recorded and important moments in history since we can know that in those cases the story as a whole is not intended to be metaphor and as such it is unlikely that specific parts of those accounts can be picked out and said to be merely symbolic.
The claim that the Bible is metaphorical basically stems from the assumption among secularists that miracles do not happen and that the belief in them is inherently irrational. In making this claim, the skeptics are trying to force their own views on the biblical authors, but any objective reading of the Bible will find that those writers really did believe that God can and does perform miraculous wonders.
The New Testament was Written Hundreds of Years After Jesus Died and it is Mistranslated
As for the first part of this claim, the Bible was canonized hundreds of years after Jesus died, but the individual books were all written within a few decades after His death and resurrection. Granted, those few decades may still be considered untrustworthy by some, but in regards to the Gospels these doubts are unfounded for three reasons: the Israelite children were required to memorize the entire Torah and as such the Jews were highly reliable witnesses (studies have shown that cultures with oral traditions are well-equipped for precise memorization), the events recorded in the Gospels are nearly all either extremely memorable or easily committed to memory, and many of the key events had very large audiences. The remaining books are nearly all letters to various churches from one apostle or another and as such would have been kept and treasured by those churches.
In regards to the claim that the Bible is mistranslated, there is very little evidence in favor of the critics. For starters, there's the fact that we actually have quite a few original copies of the Bible and the individual books that make it up. If you happen to pick up a Bible and read through it you will find it filled footnotes saying "this could also be translated like this" or "it's unclear what this word means" because the scholars who issued that Bible had copies of those documents available to them (and no, the really important verses don't have those footnotes). In terms of the number of original documents, the length of time between when those documents were written and when the very first copies were written, and the amount of damaged or unclear text the Bible is literally thousands of times more reliable than any other ancient texts.
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