Response to Deven's post (of my post on his original post).

I agree, this is an interesting conversation to have.  I'm not sure if I worded my prior response to your first post poorly, but I'm pretty sure we agree- that religious texts should be treated as literary fiction- which was what I asserted in my last post.

I apologize if it was interpreted the other way- I was trying to say that looking at, for example, the Bible, in a historical context would be logically poor decision, because, it cannot and should not be treated as such, for obvious reasons.  I've never compared the Bible to a Dickens' novel, but I guess the level of analysis and the extent to which the aforementioned efforts would or would not be attributed to either book by a particular individual for a given purpose would definitely vary on the difficulty.

Like you said, and I agree, that since there is no hard evidence that Jesus existed, treating the Bible as literary fiction does not infringe upon the lessons one can take from a story.  Speaking from personal experience, religion is much more enjoyable and much less polarizing when one concentrates on how to live personally, rather than worry about the overarching metaphysical claims that are also associated with it, the beliefs of others, or of course, claims involving the historical accuracy of anything at all in religious texts.