Ill add my 2 cents
The new testament is interesting and very helpfull to some when taken as philosophic suggestion and looked at in the abstract. My mother has said to me very profound insights relating to the teaching of jesus, many of which affirm my own beliefs. I have not heard similar insights, however, and she came into christianity late (late fourties
) so she is not typical and is in fact very skeptical. Since I have experienced good done by christianity, I cannot empirically refute that it can bring good ends, and remain convinced that it is the narrow scope and selfishness of most of its practitioners which bastardizes the philosophy of jesus, a most selfless philosophy.
I do not subscribe to the base and silly things that lie at the bible's(or any other text) surface , but rather listen to those who have had deep revelations in the words of that in which they believe, for it is a medium through which philosophy can move.
Personally, I can only accept god as that which forever evades human conciousness, that which we approach as we solve our problems and slide around with logical inquiry but cannot answer. If anything is god within the physical universe, it is the old god, the god of the gaps the god of the unkown. With each step we take towards him another few he takes back.