Love, Punishment, Genocide, Hell

I keep asking believers to tell me why you believe what you believe, but no one really answers me. In spite of 1 Peter 3:15 "But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and be ready always to give an answer to every man who asketh you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear", no one will answer me. It just falls back to 'faith'; no good reason, just 'faith'. I really struggle with this 'faith' concept. Do you have 'faith' that the plane will fly or the bridge will stand? No, based on evidence and barring external events (poor maintenance, earthquake,  deliberate sabotage) you know the bridge will stand. Even more baffling to me is the desire to believe that a capricious, jealous, all powerful, vengeful entity not only exists, but is a "loving god" wanting (and worthy of) your adoration and worship. Why do you describe yourself as a 'God fearing Christian'? How do you 'love' someone you fear? How can someone you fear possibly love you?

Help me understand the propagation of humans over the earth. Only Adam and Eve resulted in quite the population. Then every living thing (including infants, cows, kittens, bunnies, pregnant women, and puppies) was drowned by this most merciful god, except for a few of one human family and a single pair of certain animal 'kinds' on the boat. We all know how biology works. What explanation is there besides incest? I wondered about this pretty early in my life, didn't you? Don't you wonder now?

Is the whole "world wide flood" and ark story one of the "parables"? What is it supposed teach?

If what's written is too totally ridiculous to accept or 'explain', then "it's a parable", but the rest of what's written is true history. Ummm, what? How do you tell which is which? There are people who've made studying and explaining what the 'holy books' really mean their entire careers. There are some who claim "The Bible" (version unknown) or "The Quran" (only in its native tongue) is the literal word of 'God'. I don't think they even go with the 'parable' explanation; it's all "The Word of God" (Ken Ham, Answers In Genesis, many Muslims). How do you deal with the numerous contradictions? Will you answer me? 

Help me understand the idea of hell and *eternal* torture. One of the 'rewards' of Heaven is being able to look down and enjoy the screams of those suffering in hell. Not even dealing with the sadism of anyone who could enjoy someone else's pain, how could a 'loving, forgiving' or 'all merciful' god even think to create an eternal torture chamber?

The Quran, the Bible, the Mahabarata... they are all story books; the written record of our ancient ancestors' ideas of the natural world. Their ideas of how society should be, from those men's perspective. You do see the misogyny, don't you? Women are subservient to their fathers then to their husbands. Women should not speak in 'church'. Women should not be teachers. Women are to serve men. Or consider racism. Instructions on where to get and how to treat slaves. Praising skin "white as eggs" or "yellow hair", and similar? Is it just wanting what you don't have right now (the writers were brown skinned)? Or the suggestion that "fair skin" just meant you were "rich enough" that you didn't need to work? I've heard those as 'explanations' for those words, which might work okay for words of men, but words of a god? How do you correlate this in your mind? Can you tell me?

If you had not heard any of these stories until you were grown, until you were able to reason, would you believe them?