With regards to stoning, Hugh, you're conflating morality with a judicial process - hardly the same thing. Slavery is never dealt with as an issue of morality either. Much of the topic in the old testament concerns the regulation of something that is taken to be a fact of life. Even in the new testament the subject of slavery is dealt with only obliquely, namely whatever circumstances you found yourself in, whether master or servant, your primary responsibility was first of all to acknowledge Jesus as Lord and then to treat each other as you would treat him.
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Originally Posted by danielf
I was going to say: If the Bible is the unadulterated word of God, then there's no arguing really, is there?
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Unsurprisingly, the people who are given to deconstructing those beliefs they find uncomfortable are the same people who tend to question the authority of the Bible.
The Bible isn't a product of medium-like automatic writing or such like. It was penned by people who were inspired by God. But the fact of human agency in the process is enough for people who can't argue against Christian teaching without at the same time attacking the authority of the source of that teaching.