Can the Bible be trusted?

Yes. Have you ever read Shakespeare? When trying to read it myself, I needed a lot of help understanding his vocabulary and sentence structure. With proper educated assistance, though, I could enjoy his story. It would have been silly of me to try to draw my own uneducated conclusions through scanty comprehension of his original text. Same with reading the Bible. It can certainly be read with some basic, surface comprehension... however, there is much more one needs to know, fundamental history, translation, setting, perspective, etc... to fully understand the message that the author's themselves, like Shakespeare, intended to share. Centuries of study, by smart people, reveal this basic criteria. This science is called "biblical hermaneutics" and is crucial for intelligent biblical understanding to occur. Like I said, we have been given brains for a reason. I believe that basic biblical illiteracy in our time has led to much unnecessary confusion and strife... and has also led to massive lemming-like behavior around some corrupt leaders (even some who are well-meaning) who "claim" to know the "truth"... and who also make a lot of money off of biblically illiterate masses.
This is a shame... but its our own fault. Biblical illiteracy, in fact, any kind of ignorance, is the fault of the individual and no one else.