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The path to metaphor does not lead to a lack of faith in the Bible. To show how this is a misconception we must understand their concern. Since we cannot take the entire Bible literally, we are forced to take it metaphorically in places. Such an understanding invalidates the force of truth derived from metaphor. Reading the Bible as metaphor, according to these individuals, leads irrevocably to disbelieve the Book could have any authority. Instead, it becomes a simple catalog of stories and beliefs one single culture has about the world, coming to grips with the cruel nihilism our world forces them into.

Akin to the slippery slope fallacy, this fear is unfounded for a different reason than its brethren. Without a solid foundation in literal understanding, how can they possibly have truth to them? As we have described earlier, a metaphorical story has as much potency than axiomatic descriptions a Greek might posses. The argument that an Inspired work cannot be metaphoric is ridiculous; the notions that our mammalian brains, which work so effectively in the three dimensional space, could understand the non-describable that is God, the soul, and immortality.

Understanding something as metaphor is not an arbitrary method of understanding. There requires a modicum of knowledge of the source culture, as well as the intended message. That understanding in place, it becomes impossible to read more metaphor into a text without producing errors and contradictions. This is the practical limitation of reading metaphor in writing.

Therefore, considering that we receive many of the truth claims in the Bible through metaphor and the impracticability of reading the entire book as literal, there is no distinction between metaphor as authority and metaphor as ‘fanciful tales’. Considering further the fact that authority through metaphor seems plausible – it is a valid method of authority – I cannot see how something that is distinctly metaphor as authority can suddenly become fanciful by virtue of adding more metaphor to the understanding.

As many arguments against evolution claim that non-verifiability is the Achilles heal in the origin theory. Yet it seems to me they’re failing to understand there are other criteria used when determining the worth of an answer in abductive reasoning. For instance we apply Occam’s razor to figuratively slice away at answers that are overly complex, which introduce too many concepts that themselves require an explanation for. This is why we don’t say Angels fly in from Heaven and ransack a faithful soul’s house. Additionally the proposed theory, in our case evolution, must meet certain coherence with the established views. This is why when Lyell released Principle of Geology the accepted view of the Earths age became several million plus instead of a four millennia, Darwin thought of an explanation that accounted for those millions of years in the development of life on Earth. It also explained the most number of things, such as why there was diversity of species.

While the verifiability of the theory of evolution is slightly scant, especially since we do not have the ability to view the world over the course of centuries, we have enough evidence of the other natures, its simplicity, coherence with other accepted theories and its ability to answer a greater number of questions than its rival theories (including the so called intelligent design theory). It appears to me then that objections to this are not founded on any scientific principles, and that motivation has created poor science on the parts of opponents who clamor around trying to disprove not only the original theory of natural selection but also tries to undo Lyell’s Uniformitarianism since it objects to their world view. This seems incredibly absurd. Mind you there is recognition on my part that I’m allowing greater weight for science than religion, on the grounds that for the natural world it explains how things appear whereas religion is incapable of describing nature with the same degree of precision.