I believe there is a God. I believe he has revealed what he wants us to know about himself in the Bible. Just because I have thrown out old interpretations of the Bible doesn't mean that the Bible itself is a pack of lies. Much of what the bible says historically has been revealed to be true through archaelogy. Obviously the book is not equivalent to Alice in Wonderland.
The verification of some historical and geographical context does not lend support to the remaining claims of a text, however.
For instance, the Harry Potter novels contain references to real cities like London, and also refers to WWII. Many works of fiction refer to real historical figures, real cities, real events.
But that doesn't add support for the remainde3r of those novels being true.
The existence of various cities, the accurate identification of governors and monarchs, these sorts of things are all well and good...but whether Pontius Pilate was or was not actually governor of Judea circa 30AD has nothing to do with whether Jesus actually existed, whether he was crucified, whether he rose from the dead, etc.
It has even less to do with whether or not god is real, or whether human beings did or did not evolve from ancestor species.
Obviously the book is not equivalent to Alice in Wonderland.
In what regard, specifically? Both contain fanciful tales of the impossible; the only difference is the number of people who believe that the events in question actually happened, and that the characters actually exist.
The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it. - Francis Bacon
"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." - John Rogers
A world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world. But, on the other hand, in a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land. This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity. — Albert Camus
"...the pious hope that by combining numerous little turds of variously tainted data, one can obtain a valuable result; but in fact, the outcome is merely a larger than average pile of shit." - Barash, David 1995.
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