I'm a Christian. I don't believe the Bible is to be taken literally ALL the time. I don't believe ANY book is to be taken literally ALL of the time.
I don't even believe your post is to be taken completely literally. Nor is my answer.
I think one of the reasons people don't answer your question is the fact that they are thinking levels above the quality of your question. Anyone who is semi-literate knows that you cannot take literally every word of ANYTHING ALL the time. However, most literate people would not then conclude that you can't ever tell if something is to be taken literally or not.
Of course you can tell. It's not the crapshoot that you present it to be. First and foremost, you can look at context. Next, you can use logic. Also, and this is very important with the Bible, compare what you are reading to similar passages written by the same author. These are very basic rules of reading comprehension. You don't have to look to outside sources to understand everything you read in a book.
All writers use analogy, metaphor, simile, and symbolism to some degree. This is such a basic concept that I am having difficulty grasping the fact that I have to explain it to you. Wait now, I don't have to LITERALLY grasp anything. My hands are typing right now, not grasping. Wait, I just clicked with the mouse. I wasn't even LITERALLY typing right at THAT instant.
Do you see how pedantic and silly this is? Most people who seriously approach Bible reading don't engage in this kind of skeptical nonsense.
In addition to the normal instances of metaphor and symbolism contained in EVERY SINGLE BOOK EVER WRITTEN (even the most boring, technical books imaginable), some Bible writers also record dreams and visions that God caused them to experience. Now, they literally dreamed or envisioned. But the dreams and visions themselves, LIKE ALL DREAMS AND VISIONS, contain much more symbolism than LITERAL reality. Thankfully for those who struggle with reading comprehension, the Bible helpfully notes when something is a dream or a vision. Just as you might expect.
I must respectfully request that you not reply to my post without first reading it, and demonstrating that you did comprehend it, even if you do not agree with it (although I honestly don't see what you could possibly disagree with; not LITERALLY see, but, you know). I have no interest in the vitriol and animosity usually on display in these "crevo" threads. I'd love to get into a discussion about how a reader knows if something is literal or not, and I'd love even more to apply this to the Bible (a Book I have been studying and meditating on my entire life), but I don't want any of the nasty nonsense and I don't care to be dismissed.
frgoff made a point similar to yours (I believe) in his post to me, which I replied in post 135. If I'm wrong, or if you don't believe I understood your post, then fine. But I'm not really interested in any tangential discussion. To me the issue is this simple. If one believes that Genesis should be taken as a literal account of history, then explain why this is so. I think it's clear I've demonstrated that it can't be simply because the entire Bible should be taken literally, so now the task becomes to demonstrate which verses should be taken literally, and why, specifically, why should Genesis be taken literally (if you are a creationist/IDer).
I suppose my main point can be summed up thusly: Since no one can show any "superior" interpetation of Scripture over another, it's pretty much pointless to believe a creationist Christian is somehow superior to an "evolutionist" Christian.
I don't know where you stand on the crevo debate, since I'm not a regular to these threads. But if you are one who takes the accounts of Genesis literally, and calls anyone else who doesn't "not a real Christian", then read my post in 135 and tell me, "Who decides what verses to take literally and why?"