Question

Hello, recently I’ve been going through various thought processes, and I’m unsure whether to believe or not. [I come from a somewhat unusual religious background.]
In the end, because of various arguments [some of them yours], I decided that it is plausible that there is a God—things like the complexity of the world, and the fact that we have free choice, even though the existence of an "I" that chooses must be something outside nature.
But regarding the Torah, I am honestly torn, and there really are arguments both ways:
Problems with reliability
1) There are many things in the Torah that directly contradict science [the creation of the world, the Flood, the hyrax and the hare chewing the cud, perhaps also the issue of non-kosher defects]. To explain everything as a miracle seems forced, and on the other hand to explain it as a holy falsehood paints a very strange picture [a deceitful God]—and how would I know He is not deceiving us in other areas too? And in general, regarding the hyrax and the hare, that doesn’t work so well. True, people probably once thought they chewed the cud, but the Holy One, blessed be He, had no special need to mention that [it isn’t even really a verse needed for a commandment], and yet it is written there together with those that chew the cud. The only way out is to say that the Torah truly does not care about facts at all, only about actions, and has no problem "educationally lying" on the basis of common stories or mistaken scientific knowledge, when the ultimate goal is solely practical behavior, with no regard whatsoever for factual truth. That seems extremely strange to me, and it is hard for me to believe that anyone ever understood the Torah that way before the Enlightenment at the earliest.
2) Regarding the Oral Torah, good reasons are needed in order to be convinced, but that actually does not seem all that implausible to me, because with the Written Torah, without some accepted interpretation or other, it is very hard to manage. But there do seem to be suspicious elements there that may have been inserted because of interests, and it is a bit hard to tell what is what. On the other hand, there are things that are very far from the plain meaning, yet still do not seem to serve any visible interest [especially in commandments considered between a person and God].
3) There are anthropomorphic expressions in the Bible, and it seems that explaining them non-literally is a very late development. That raises some suspicion that the Torah’s original conception was of a corporeal God. True, one could say that this too was so people at that time could cope with it when the Torah was given, but then we are back to the strange conception of divinity from problem no. 1.
4) One last thing is the difficulties raised by biblical criticism. Some of them are a little suspicious. On the one hand, a lot of what is there seems very unprofessional [and archaeology over such spans of time is little more than speculation]. But research into linguistic style and things like that sometimes gives the feeling that maybe there is something to it. And if the Torah was changed, how can I know what was changed and what was not? 
Evidence for reliability
1) I spoke about this with a friend, and I was indeed persuaded that there are things in the Torah that are very exceptional relative to its time, such that if they were written by a human being, he would have had to be extraordinarily creative and possess a religious-legal outlook unprecedented in his period [I saw a comparison between the Code of Hammurabi and the Torah: in the Torah, the husband is not the one who decides whether to kill his adulterous wife; "Fathers shall not be put to death for sons" unlike there, where they do that; and so on].
2) The religious outlook is also very different from idolatry—from the fact that God is not "easygoing" but demands justice and genuine repentance, and in principle cannot be bribed—which is a huge gap from what was accepted in that period and long afterward. Another point is the very concept of true monotheism, namely that the other gods are basically nothing—not just that one may not worship them, but that they do not exist. [There are some expressions that seem a little odd, but in the end, in the creation of the world there is only Him.]
3) The Torah promises many miracles [the Sabbatical year, the sotah ordeal], and in principle there is no obvious interest for an ordinary person who wants to persuade believers to join his religion to tell them not to work the field for an entire year, or to promise a miracle that may not happen in something as extreme as everyone’s food supply. 
4) A few other things that are very unusual for the period, such as the concept of naziriteship [specifically abstaining from wine and haircutting, rather than things like sex or meat], the husband’s obligations toward the wife, and so on. I emphasize that this is not a moral argument but a factual one—it is not so likely that whoever wrote such a thing was an ordinary person in that period, because it runs against the outlook of the whole world on these matters.
5) There is an interesting scientific fact, namely that the upper natural limit of human life is more or less 120 years—a lifespan that according to science, in that period probably not even one person reached, and there was no way to know it. Not all that significant, but a small supporting point.
6) And the sixth point is that history shows that the Jewish people really went through very remarkable things—they were exiled, murdered, and came back and rebuilt themselves, both physically and religiously. Everything is relative, but still, no other people of this size ever managed to do that. I can’t point to any specific event that I think was a miracle, but the overall timeline is very impressive, and I would not be surprised if there were some divine guiding hand in it. Of course, this does not entirely guarantee the truth of the Torah, because maybe God simply wants us to continue existing because we’re pretty decent overall, but it is plausible that if a people was exceptional throughout the generations in various ways, and God wants it to endure, then there is also some truth in their religion.
7) In the end, I do think there are certain actions God wants us to do, and in principle there is no way to know what they are without some revelation from Him. Even what is called the categorical imperative is a very partial rule, because you can put almost anything into it as long as it is consistent. And since feelings are not consistent either, then the best revelation is the Torah. In any case I would need to believe that it happened even if I were Christian or Muslim, so I might as well be Jewish. I do not know of any revelation apart from this one that comes with a set of laws and is also actually accepted by broad parts of the world as having happened.
 
In short, that is what I have managed to think through so far. I would be glad if you could comment on whether I have some flaw in my reasoning, or whether in your opinion different weight should be given to certain arguments. I assume you are not completely objective, since you are after all a rabbi, but that’s okay; from browsing the site I did get the impression that you are a wise person.
 
Thank you from the bottom of my heart