You should change your thread's title to "I Don't Believe Anything In The OT" then. If you (and a lot of the other posters here from what I've witnessed) approach The Bible with a non-aggressive view born out of an open mind instead of the intention to find everything possible to lessen it's veracity, you might be able to discern between allegorical and literal texts. Try not to let your bitterness over the actions of the people of my faith cloud your judgment. A lot to ask, no doubt. Like when God "tears open the sky" in the story of Noah, I don't think a titanic Zeus-like figure tore open the Earth's stratosphere and then poured water over all the lands. I absolutely believe in the big bang, dinosaurs and evolution. I believe God is a masterful architect and the supreme scientist, having created all the laws of nature and physics. You would probably scream "pre-determination" in retaliation to this, but here me out. Say you construct a system that operates with "randomness" and then let it do as it will within certain parameters (like for the purpose of creating homo sapiens), voila, in a simple leap of logic that seems to acutely escape millions of people, you have a Christian who believes in the laws of physics. In any case, good luck finding 3,000 year old foot prints in the desert or evidence of slavery in a nation that might very well have decided not to mention that particular nuance of their culture in their own hieroglyphs. [EDIT] In any case, the OT wasn't a "Biology 101" text book. It was a moral guideline to life and the recounting of the affairs of God's chosen people, the Hebrews, amongst other things. As far as I know, the only science in it is the part where it states "you shouldn't eat pigs or shellfish" and, rightly so, because those two animals often times are very unhealthy to eat.
