We've all heard the question of whether or not the Bible should be taken "literally." The answer seems to be "yes" if you are (a) a fundamentalist who believes everything the Bible says no matter what reality it clashes with or (b) an atheist.The group that wants to say "no" or "not always" are the more moderate believers of the Bible (or liberal believers or mainstream believers or whatever label you prefer), those who recognize that the Bible often says things that do not jive with reality and therefore must be metaphorical in nature. In fact, some of these moderate believers -- because fundamentalist and atheists both tend to read the Bible literally -- declare that atheists are "no better than" fundamentalists for failing to understand the nuances of this special book.
What fundamentalists and atheists have in common is the attempt to honestly face the reality of their world, but the reality of an atheist is the actual world, while the reality of a fundamentalist is what is written in an old book.
So atheists can recognize that the universe is billions of years old, for example: a fact that is proven in the real world with overwhelming evidence. Atheists can then read the literal words of the Bible -- which says that the earth and everything on it was created by a god in six days -- and know that this book is an artifact from a pre-scientific age when then-unanswerable questions were addressed with supernatural stories--which no one faults the ancient writers for writing.
Fundamentalists read in the Bible that the earth was created in six days and believe it, on "faith." When confronted with the fact that this simply isn't true by people who observe the real world, fundamentalists defer to their "reality" (the Bible) and deny that the actual reality exists.
You can, I hope, see the difference between these two camps.
