People, both Christians and atheists, seriously underestimate the intellectual depth of the Bible. They think that they actually know more than Jesus, Moses and King Solomon.
All people should believe the Bible, not for religious reasons, but for its historical accuracy and for the cohesiveness of its testimonies. Yes, the testimonies are very cohesive. Do not underestimate the witnesses. They are not stupid.
People who fall back and say "don't take the Bible literally" do not know how to read the Bible in its literary context.
People who come up with absurd ideas like "the Bible says the earth is 6000 years old" likewise do not know how to read the Bible in its literary context.
Atheists are at least guilty of the same sins of ignorance and underestimation. In addition to being ignorant about Bible literary genres, atheists blindly accept what some ignorant Christian told them about the Bible without researching the Bible themselves. They've pick up the fundie baton and use it as an excuse to not trust the Bible. They treat the baton as if it represents the Bible, which it doesn't.
The Bible stories are true. They are not a lie. They are not figurative (unless the literary genre says it is). If you read the Bible in context, without adding assumptions to it, you will find that Bible makes terrific sense. Here are some of things you will discover . . .
1) Adam and Eve were not necessarily the first humans. They were the first humans "to made in the image of God." The Bible definition of Adam is a human + image of God. Different. In the Bible, the "Image of God" always means "spiritual image", not physical likeness. To be in the image of God, is to have his desires. While Adam and Eve were made in the image of God, their son Abel was not, and Cain was certainly not. Read Ge 4. Be amazed that you missed this crucial point.
2). Gomorrah. You can go to the south end of the Dead Sea and literally look under water at the archaeological remains of Gomorrah. Gomorrah existed. While the place names in the Bible prove true every time, the story itself is not to easy to prove.
3). While it is difficult if not impossible to prove out Noah's story by evidence, it is certainly possible to keep tabs on his descendants. In Genesis 10 you will find the "Table of Nations." These nations are the peoples who are the descendants of Noah. (For example, the "Semitic peoples" are the descendants of Shem.) Archaeologists love this list. They recognize many of the nations in this list to have existed and there is evidence to prove it. The nations in the list which they haven't found, they look for, because "the Bible never misses."
The Bible's stories about Adam and Eve, Noah's Ark, Sodom and Gomorrah seem to be true in every context. It is just like any historical story . . . they are hard to prove. One can certainly not disprove them. And also the stories bear out a cohesive personality of God given by the rest of the testimonies about God in the Bible.
Instead of attempting to prove an unprovable, here's a Bible statement that should impress anyone. It is a profound fact that only God would know but man did not discover until 1966.
Science and the Bible agree on the Big Bang. The Bible states a very specific fact of nuclear physics on how God created the universe. God said, "Let There Be Light". The Bible says that from "Light" , the universe sprang.
From Einstein, we know that E= mc^2--that light is energy, and from it comes matter. Humans did not know this until the 20th century.
In 1966, Bell Labs discovered the universe's background radition. Prior to that, astronomers like Hubble observed that the universe expands. Astronomers conclude from what they observe that all matter in the universe started from a condensed point in the center of the universe.
Into order to condense all matter into the center of the universe, that matter has to start off at "energy". There is your Light.
Moses knew how God started the universe in 1450 BC. No other religious text aligns with the science. How did Moses know about the obscurce though important point of nuclear physics?
Moses, who wrote Genesis, spent a lot of time talking to God. He hung out with God on Mt. Sinai for 40 days. If you were Moses, what would you ask God? Would you ask him, "How did you make the universe?" Apparently he did, and apparently God told him, complete with a nuclear physics lesson. Moses recorded what God said in the form a poem starting with "And God said, "Let there be light.""
The scientific profoundness of the Creation Story does not stop there. If you unravel the stanzas of the creation story (for the story is Hebrew thought rhyme), the order of the creation days becomes the order which Darwin deduced 150 years ago.
The Hebrew grammar behind the creation story clearly points out that the order of the creation days are not in chronological order. The order of the days, if one dares to one an order to them, is really 1, 4, 2, 5, 3, 6. 3 Days of formation followed by 3 days of filling. What God forms on day 1, he fills 3 days later. A thought rhyme.
People should take the Bible literally, but one has to know what kind of literature you are reading. We Westerners have to know something about ancient Hebrew literary to get it right.
Most people shamefully treat every piece of literature in the Bible as if it is a page out of an American encyclopedia. Smarter people suspect this problem, and so they said, "Don't take the Bible literally." But they are not smart enough to know that if they knew the literary form of what they are reading, they could take it literally.
More stupid people do not suspect the problem at all, and like the smarter people,. are not aware of the literary forms in the Bible. These people say take it literally anyway.