I personally love a good story, and bible stories are certainly some of the best. I mean, take the story of Solomon and the two women claiming the same baby. Jim, in Huckleberry Finn, tells an excellent version of that story. Thanks to Samuel Clemons/Mark Twain, another of the world's great story tellers.

And the story of the birth of the baby Jesus. Belief or no, I find it a powerful and moving story. I told it to my kids, the little heathens.

As far as literally believing the bible, this was not what I was taught even in Sunday school. I went to a fairly liberal Methodist church for a while, as a kid, and they have a more loose than strict interpretation. Some of the sects that are very literal just confuse me as there are so many contradictions in the bible how do you even know which one to take seriously? Not to mention that is has been retranslated and handed down over the intervening years, and must be something like the old game of telephone in some spots.