Catholic church says not to take Bible as truth

[Professor S]

The idea of taking the Bible literally is actually a recent idea in relative terms. The oldest versions of Christianity, represented most closely today by Russian Orthodox, always took the Bible a book of parables in most cases. They are lessons to learn to live by, and not to take every word literally.

To take Neo's example, creation or Intelligent Design as a parable would follow in this type of argument.

The world was created in 7 days. Yes, we know that is not accurate measured in today's terms. But how long is a day to God? Or an hour or a minute? The measurement of time is a human creation, and not necessarily the only measurement. A single day to God might be a billion of our years. The point to take from it is that God created the universe, not that Cristians are trying to say that it took 7 days. Do some Christians take the Bible literally? Yes, but thats their weakness, not their religions. I find that when any religious people take their books literally, they tend to miss the intended lesson and use the text the legitimize their pre-determined beliefs and/or biases.

FYI - I do not believe in Creationism or intelligent design. I am a believer that the universe is infinite in space and time, as is God. I am a Deist (sp?), not a Christian.

The idea that the Catholic church, or any other church for that matter, accepts the idea of the Bible as a parable does not invalidate Christianity or religion.