No, nobody takes the whole thing LITERALLY. You need to stop repeating that lie that you've been indoctrinated with.
But how ironic that Protestants are accused of *taking the whole thing literally* when Catholics are the biggest Bible literalists going when it comes to supporting their chosen, predetermined doctrines.
The clearest example is John 6 where you all think that we have to engage in cannibalism to be saved.
From beginning to end, God forbids the consumption of blood, and yet Catholicism teaches that it must be done, thus contradicting the entire weight of revealed Scripture on the subject.
Jesus used a metaphor in John 6 and at the end of the discourse tells the disciples that He was using it.
He tells us that it is the Spirit who gives life, that the flesh is no help at all, and you Catholicism demands the eating of flesh, something Jesus said is of no use.
Nor do Protestants not recognize poetry, prophecy, metaphor, parables, similes, etc.
Not one Protestant believes that God has wings, feathers, and pinions, that Jesus is an actual lion like Aslan, that He is made of wheat flour, that He is a vine, all green and leafy, or a literal sword comes out of Jesus mouth with which to destroy His enemies.
You all need to start thinking for yourselves instead of parroting anti-Protestant talking points you have been fed.
Tilting at wind mills and building and knocking down strawmen may feel good, but it accomplishes nothing but making you look foolish and lacking discernment.
My problem isn’t with taking the entire bible literally. My problem is with taking so much literally, such as declaring war on science by insisting the world doesn’t seem to be billions of years old, but dismissing so much of Jesus’ actual words and the revelations made to his disciples as “merely symbolic.”
By the way, I don’t mean to say that God didn’t create the world in seven days. What’s a day mean before the Earth is even set in motion around the sun? Or maybe God made the Earth merely look 5 billion years old so we could learn science and also put our faith in him. I dunno. I do know that claims that the Earth is APPARENTLY only a few thousand years old are utter dreck.
And just for the record, the point was that you claimed that the Queen of Heaven only ever referred to idolatry; when I pounted out that no, in fact, there is a HUGE section of the New Testament where the mother of Jesus is crowned queen in the Heavens, you changed the topic to more nonsense.