Follow-up
10 o'clock, June 20, 2003
An unrelated but pertinent observation from Will Shetterly:
The older I get, the more I suspect that many devout people understand that they’re engaged in symbolic discourse. They just don’t have the terminology to express this in a way that says something is truer for being symbolic than it would be for being literal.
I wish Will were right in alluding to the idea that most people take their religion more and more figuratively as they mature. But alas, that's not the case in my experience.
The world would be a vastly better place if everyone treated the Bible just like Aesop's Fables. But most people, at least that I know of, don't. And I don't see it changing anytime soon.