“If someone fails to recognize allegory, metaphor, simile and poetry in Scripture, they miss out on a lot of TRUTH.”
Precisely! Therefore, it is not a literally inerrant document. Divinely inspired, yes, but not, in general, literally true. Creation may in fact have been brought to its current state through a mechanism such as evolution. That assertion is not contradictory to your own representation of the Bible as largely symbolic.
And what does *literally inerrant* mean?
Why do evos keep making up terms and then forcing their definitions on everyone?
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/literal%5B1%5D
Main Entry: lit·er·al
1 a: according with the letter of the scriptures b: adhering to fact or to the ordinary construction or primary meaning of a term or expression : actual *liberty in the literal sense is impossible — B. N. Cardozo* c: free from exaggeration or embellishment *the literal truth* d: characterized by a concern mainly with facts *a very literal man*
2: of, relating to, or expressed in letters
3: reproduced word for word : exact , verbatim *a literal translation*
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/inerrant
Main Entry: in·er·rant
: free from error
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/truth
Main Entry: truth
1 a archaic : fidelity , constancy b: sincerity in action, character, and utterance
2 a (1): the state of being the case : fact (2): the body of real things, events, and facts : actuality (3)often capitalized : a transcendent fundamental or spiritual reality b: a judgment, proposition, or idea that is true or accepted as true *truths of thermodynamics* c: the body of true statements and propositions
3 a: the property (as of a statement) of being in accord with fact or reality bchiefly British : true 2 c: fidelity to an original or to a standard
To say that something is the *literal truth* is to say that it’s “free from exaggeration or embellishment”. It does NOT mean that it must be taken as word for word. The Bible is true and inerrant, but to claim that people take every word as literal in the sense evos mean, doesn’t work.
Trying force someone into a non-existent framework of interpretation and then saying, *See, it doesn’t work* is disingenuous.