That's what I'm saying - the bible is a decent book, and like you said, fairly progressive for its time, but people fail to apply it to their lives properly. You kind of jumped back on your point there - at first you said that it's wrong to blame people for holding it all literally (which I agree, it's too far down the road to really blame anyone), but then you admit that it's our fault for being fallible (unless those two are unrelated). But you are right, the bible is probably difficult to read through, but I still see no reason to take anything absolutely literally - its meant to serve as a moral guide, not a constitution.
Haha, I guess you could see it as me being a bit hypocritical, I'm sorry! Let me rephrase: We are, by nature, pretty messed up. I think anybody would agree with that. So it can't be helped that some would take EVERYTHING in the bible literally, even the stuff that isn't meant to be taken that way. That doesn't excuse the mistake, though, it just recognizes that it's natural.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that the bible and its authors had the right ideas, but due to our nature, like you said, we were bound to make a mess of it and cause the troubles that we have today. Just the fact that Christianity has split into dozens, if not hundreds of different sects, all interpreting the bible in their own ways and modifying it, says so much about how we fail to simply follow along and be united under the same, general moral rule of "Be cool, man." (I'm pretty sure that was pretty much all Jesus talked about).
He also called the Pharisees (a self-righteous group of Jews at the time) a "Brood of Vipers" more than once, so that's neat. I think Jesus summarized himself pretty well in Matthew 22:36-40