I believe the bible cannot be interpreted literally, and I'll tell you why. Here's just one of my favorite examples:
'And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. Is not this written in the book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day.' Joshua 10:13 (King James Version)
What science tells us in the 21st century that people didn't believe when the book of Joshua was written, is that the sun does not revolve around the earth. The sun never "goes down", the earth just rotates until the sun is on the other side of it. Oh, the sun DOES move, along with the rest of the galaxy, but the effect of the sun "standing still" would be very different from the effect described in this passage.
So, if you want to interpret the bible as God's literal, direct words, there are several possibilities I can think of:
1. God, who created everything that exists, including the sun and the earth, is somehow ignorant of, or has forgotten, the mechanisms of celestial bodies in his universe.
2. God is purposefully trying to deceive the readers of his book, for some unknown purpose.
3. The sun USED to revolve around the earth, but at some point in the Last several thousand years God decided to quietly change the way that the universe works, for some unknown purpose.
Those possibilities do not seem very likely to me. It seems much more likely to me that the bible cannot be interpreted literally, word for word.
Now, this argument does not say that God does not exist, or even that the bible is not his word. I'm not at all discounting the possibility that the bible was a collaboration, ideas directly
inspired to the writers of it by God himself, but written in the words of the men who were listening, from
their own perspective. All I'm saying is that
literal interpretation of the bible does not make much sense to me. And faith, for me, HAS to be based on what makes sense. I don't have any use for blind faith.
This is not meant as an attack on your religion as a whole. Just because the bible isn't literal doesn't, in my opinion, necessarily make it completely invalid. I grew up in the christian church, and I used to believe as you do, so I'm not unsympathetic to you position.
Solar