CHRISTIANS PLEASE EXPLAIN "tower of babel"

[Chad32]

I'm sure from a nonliteralist perspective, it's just to explain why different languages exist. The problem is that stories like these are the only way we can know what Yahweh is like. You can't just say that he's full of justice and mercy and love, and then tell stories about how he makes a beautiful garden and puts something in it that will screw everything up, or destroy the world because people are doing things he doesn't like, or ruin an attempt to make one of the wonders of the world because it's not something he directed himself, or kill babies because of something their parents did, or have people killed because they broke a commandment they didn't know about, or command the slaughter of villages where people don't worship him and reward his followers by allowing them to rape the virgins, or any number of things that he's supposed to have done or commanded people to do.

What's meant to be literal? What's meant to merely be metaphor to explain things in the world? Sometimes I think the only reason we take some things as metaphor is because we've found out enough about the world that we know these things can't really happen. Two people, or a small family, can't propagate the human race without some serious genetic defects down the line. You can't survive long at high altitudes in a boat with a bunch of animals without suffocating to death. You could spend your entire life devoutly following Jesus, and no matter what you do there will be other followers that say you're doing it wrong.