Try as I might, I can't even begin to wrap my brain around the idea of taking the Bible literally and the whole Fundamentalist Movement.
I look at the Old Testament as a Love story between God and his people. The Bible was written by men(not a judgment of whether or not God influenced those men, that is up to the reader) whose audience were the people at that time. The accuracy of the translation matters, as does our knowledge of the customs and history of the people. The more we know the better we can understand the meaning. Taking it all literal means you miss the point big time. It also means you can use the Bible to justify just about anything, such as slavery. I can use it to prove reincartnation, to disprove reincarnation. I could justify murder and war with it or the opposite. Wasting your time with that means you lose the real meaning, the moral story and the message that was written for people at that specific time.
Reading Revelation can be a chore and a turnoff if you were to interpret it literally. When you read Revelation with the knowledge that is a style of writing(apocalyptic) that was popular at the time and that it was written to give hope to the Christians of that day who were being persecuted by Rome and might be tempted to leave Christianity, then all the sudden you can see the beauty in it. It baffles me to see people taking it all literal and talking about a "rapture" and carrying on about "end times". 666 was Nero. Babylon is Rome. Only the Father Knows Jesus's return. The flood is a story about faith and God's grace. It didn't have to happen literally to give the message it intended and to give that message meaning. Messages are so much more meaningful when told in parables and beautiful stories.
If people didn't take the Bible literal then there wouldn't be a silly creationism evolution debate. You wouldn't need to deny a truth to prove a point that doesn't need to be proven. Most christion religions don't take a literal, inerrant spin on the Bible, that is mainly an American Phenomenon that I just don't get. I refuse to believe that my evangelical, mornonic boss is going to heaven and the Dalai Lama is going to hell for being a "non believer". Common sense decries that and it decries Bible Literalism.
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