Sorry, I guess I worded it wrong which makes it sound confusing. What I meant to say was that while I was a Christian I believed the HS was guiding me in my quest for truth; consequently when I felt lead to search out an answer or read a book I thought God was guiding me. One of the first books I felt lead to read was called Thank God for Evolution by Michael Dowd, which quickly started me on the path to learn the facts about evolution. Bit by bit my new found knowledge awoke in me a sense of discovery which opened my mind to view the Bible from an entirely different perspective. Anyway, that is what I meant when I said the answers I got is what began the journey that would lead me out of Christianity. Hope that clarifies things.
Butterfly, I see the same verses in the O.T that you cite so often, and what fear happens a lot is when we read something harsh or brutal, we place ourselves in the shoes of the victim and decide that it is really an awful thing which is being said. This is also because most of the time we extend our sympathies to people even when they are wrong. Mercy can be expected by any person, a murderer, a rapist, etc etc. So one may feel inclined to be merciful, to be the better person.
My honest opinion is, you never met God, sure you can say I'm wrong and I'll agree, but I don't think you will say that if you are honest. I also think your faith, when you were a christian, was on a book, the Bible, nothing more. The reason I say this, is because the Holy spirit, if he does exist, is God. And if you really knew him than how can you un-know him, that is not possible. How can someone like God exist and then he doesn't? What I feel happened is that you had this feeling. There was no genuine revelation to it. When you realized that there were things that you could not condone or comprehend of this ancient document, you slowly begin to walk out. I know that feeling. I have stood on that ground, where one thinks that he or she has lost it all. But I also realize this is because we have been taught about God in a way which is quite, childish. "If God is on your side, nothing bad can happen to you" and various other thoughts going along the same lines. Most Christians, much like me and you, are taught the Sunday school version of God, even when they should be mature enough to study more.
Without proper guidance, what happened to you is inevitable. Its like a kid who only knows how to ride a bicycle but jumps in to drive a race car, the accident is bound to happen and it happened to you. Please do not take this as an insult, because its not. I am not trying to discredit your theories from what I wrote above.
The bible, without guidance of God is just a book, that's it. People have used it to justify wars, violence, slavery, male-dominance, etc etc. No one is denying that. Even if the pope orders tomorrow that just because God ordered Israel to war that means we can war too, is a wrong use of the Bible. And no matter how many website you read which say otherwise, the truth is, its wrong. Even when the majority claims so, its wrong.
You have trouble understanding God, because you are using the Bible to understand God, which is wrong. You have to understand the Bible by knowing Christ. You have to know God to understand the Bible. And the reason you do not is because you never knew God. You felt like a christian, you behaved like a Christian, you followed the Bible, you went to church but you didn't know Christ and that is why you failed to understand the whole spirit of the message of the Bible.
Am I saying that a non-christian can not understand the Bible, no. I think anyone can understand the Bible, intellectually if they need to. But on a spiritual level, that understanding is dead, because there is no faith to it. And I fear that your disagreement is not intellectual at its core either, it's spiritual. You looked to fill that void, but you failed because you had feeling but no substance and that ultimately led you to your decision to leave the faith. If you had known God you would have asked him, trusted him. There are times when our faith lets us down. But the key is to know that we also are human and we could be dead wrong in our judgement before we make indifinite claims about our spiritual life.
Your statement that "Yah-weh" reflects a male tribal God, is correct, he does because in the O.T that was who he was. Because that is the way the male-dominant society chose to describe him.
That the Bible condones slavery, I will correct you, the O.T does.
That the Bible condones rape, no it does not.
That the Bible condones genocide, no but the O.T does condone killing in war.
That these things are somewhat related to Christian message, No way.
And all of this does not reflect upon the goodness of God, not one bit because I can see why it happened.
Read a secular history of the cannanite nations and their religions and you will find practices such as, human sacrifice, child sacrifice, burning children, and other acts that were highly immoral. This is one of the prime reasons God commanded Israel to wipe them off. The second was war. When Israel was commanded to war against another tribe, it was not that the others were just peaceful citizens waiting to be kicked. Every tribe had warriors and they would fight. So genocide is hardly the right word to describe what happened because the biblical language as Paul said earlier in a post is highly passionate-expression to describe how the events went down. You do not have to assume that what is written happened in totality. And if somewhere it did, it is a rule of exception, nothing else. God commands people but he does not control them, always remember that.
Consider the Book of Chronicles. It was written when Israel came back from the slavery, and the scribes penned down this book and they wanted to show how glorious once there nation was and so they wrote about David and Solomon, the best of kings and the even omitted the sins of these people. They presented them as perfect kings. A sign of divine leadership assigned to them. One reason is obvious enough it was a careful way to remind the new generation of their history but the other reason why they omitted the mistakes of these kings is because they were already written in the book of kings.
When the first five books of the Bible were written, Israel was a new nation. They had a lot of problems, one was that they were surrounded by barbaric tribes and they had to take care of that. Slavery was allowed by God because the other option was simply to kill your captives. And there would be nothing wrong with that in the ANE, since if Israel did not do this, their enemies would. Keep this context when you read the O.T.
Anyway, not to make it longer than it already is, my humble opinion is you need to search, afresh and new. Dispose of any presumptions you have and search new, ask for help, there is plenty of help, scholarship, studies. Its not a one sided case as you make it sound. There are many people on this board who would love to help you, including me.
As I said earlier, today you may have intellectual objections to the Bible, but back then when you left your faith you had spiritual ones and they weren't answered.
What I meant to say was that while I was a Christian I believed the HS was guiding me in my quest for truth; consequently when I felt lead to search out an answer or read a book I thought God was guiding me. One of the first books I felt lead to read was called Thank God for Evolution by Michael Dowd, which quickly started me on the path to learn the facts about evolution. Bit by bit my new found knowledge awoke in me a sense of discovery which opened my mind to view the Bible from an entirely different perspective. Anyway, that is what I meant when I said the answers I got is what began the journey that would lead me out of Christianity. Hope that clarifies things. 
