[Serious] A Literal Bible. Answering questions

[The Grand Nudger]

I was aware that the site was claimed to be roundly debunked, but I never saw anything other than sophistic arguments based on mockery of religion, and using individual scientist's misinterpretations to rubbish their whole dataset, in the same way YECs rubbish everything from NASA just because of fish eye lenses in launch vehicles. 

I somehow doubt that a professional explaining exactly how his own findings had been both misinterpreted and misrepresented falls into the category of sophistic arguments based on mockery of religion.  Though, I could see how, if you were that referenced professional - you might be a little pissed about it.

That said - let's just run with it.  You believe there's some ulterior motive at play, but you were aware that anyone could google the claim...for example... and they'd find exactly what I mentioned?  That the author they explicitly base their premise upon does not agree with their conclusions.

Yes, I am completely aware of these different schools of thought. I'm trying to break apart the false dichotomy between them. The entire main point of my first post in this thread is that people are locked into a 'literal' reading which is just religious myths inserted on top of the Bible, and the text itself doesn't support that view. This effectively locks a huge area of study into the realm of "anti-science nonsense" which is avoided by anyone who wants to keep hold of a career, unless they want to go into the other lucrative business of pushing Anti-science nonsense, who are not concerned with truth. 

If the text doesn't support a literalist view, then why assert such a view in your own conclusion?  That this is some description of a real event witnessed by some author in the narrative chain?  I'm sure there's alot to unpack in whatever anti-science nonsense is, and why it would be bad if much of a religious myth were locked into it...but - just to erase any worries there-  There's nothing anti-scientific about people expressing the contents of their faith through mythical or legendary narratives.  It's a thing we do, and religious beliefs are not scientific beliefs in the first place.  Not beliefs about how the world is - but about how it should be.

Or, at least, this is my understanding. That we commonly tell stories intended to lay out our vision for the world. Do you have a different understanding?

What do you mean by wholly within the context of just my own conclusion?

That is generally how you can understand religious stories, which have a lot of well documented patterns and a flexible relation to reality, yes. Understanding this is how you understand how specific "Bible Stories" and their surrounding cultural literature have been derived from a book which doesn't contain those stories.

Well, just from inside that dichotomy breaking notion.  Where, when the story tells us a woman was transormed into a pillar of salt..you think..instead, that;s a way of describing what it looks like to watch a person vaporized by an airburst.  Just inside that setup alone...how do you think that plays out?  Where something vaporizes a person close enough for someone else to see..but leaves them alive to tell the tale?  So that it's something like a witness description, rather than a creative bit of fictional extrapolation for effect?