How reliable are the Scriptures? I believe they are very reliable. You seem to want to pick and choose. That you cynicaly lump God in with fairly tale beings says a lot about how you value Scripture....
Scripture may very well be more reliable than you currently think....
I attempted to imply that you were the one that lumps God in with fairly tale beings by insisting that the First Chapter of Genesis is verbatim factual.
The first of a great many paradoxes to literal interpretation is that it clearly states that the Sun and Moon were not created until the fourth day. Yet, how can a day happen with no Sun and Moon. How can the first morning happen with no Sun?
How can you trust every scribe or monk to translate from ancient Hebrew and Greek and write words for the past thousands of years in just such a way that they mean exactly what you say they are supposed to mean in our language that has been cobbled together from Latin, Greek and Teutonic with a tremendous number of permutations up to the present? Have you ever read Chaucer?
WHAN that Aprille with his shoures soote
The droghte of Marche hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne,
And smale fowles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nacht with open ye,
(So priketh hem nature in hir corages:
Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
And palmers for to seken straunge strondes,
To ferne halwes, couthe in sondry londes;
And specially, from every shires ende
Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,
The holy blisful martir for to seke,
That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seke.
That is only six hundred years and a verbatim translation can't be done.