@Ledgem: in fact, much "earth level" daily practicing Buddhism *does* depend on those Buddha fairy tales and moral teachings via "stories of his life". If you look how Buddhism is implemented in Tibet -- you'll see a lot of the pre-buddhist color and variety blended into pure buddhist thought. In Japan, the Shinto and Buddhists doctrine and practice are almost indistinguishable at times - each taking from the other. Pure Buddhism (Zen, etc) that doesn't depend on supernatural input is kind of an intellectual class of Buddhism.
Christianity maps out in a similar fashion, ranging from people who fervently believe their Bible School Stories (not necessarily mapping to biblical text), literalists, metaphorists, modern academic theology...
@WK: well... in America, there are quite a large population of "literalists" which tends to swamp out sounds made by the rest of the Christian communities. The creationists, literalists, and their followers are a significant portion of the population (unlike in AU or UK).
@Anh
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You see, I just don't see the logic of saying "this is the truth, as revealed to us by God" and then going "except for those parts which we don't like, and which have to be "interpreted" out of all recognition".
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You can not like it... but then they aren't asking you
You're trying to map logic onto something fundamentally based in "emotional anti-rationalism" ... ain't gonna work and you'll just get a headache.
They're not saying "those parts we don't like" ... the Bible has never been an integrated, proofed, set of interlocking instructions to begin with.
You're insisting something that can only be the case by throwing logic and reason out the window. Recognizing the *roots* of biblical fragments and the intended audience of the scrapbook that is the Bible is in no way "cherrypicking".
Myself, the whole tendency of evangelicals constantly reaching for the Old Testament is assert their views is kind of anti-Christian anyway. The OT is for the Judaic faith --- and *they* are more likely to assert the writings in it are mythological to some level.
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OK. What about the NT, then? Is it a metaphor, too? Was there such a person as Jesus, son of God and so on, or not? Did he or didn't he perform miracles?
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Anh, there is virtually *no* evidence that Jesus Christ existed historically except for the NT. A merest scrap of a name. When the Romans took Christianity as their mantle (and bootstrapped it to State Religion), if he existed he'd been dead for 400 years. The 4 Gospels were selected out of many to represent Jesus -- they contradict each other in multiple places. Their purpose is to convey the meaning of his message and to assert his position as "the Messiah". The rest of the New Testament are the interpretations and philosophical writings of various apostles for the faith. Christianity is a leap of blind faith in its pure form.
For something you've ruled out so easily, you don't seem to have actually studied it much. I recommend at least reading the works of Joseph Cambell to start with.
I've spent about 35 out of the last 50 years studying and questioning the religions and philosophies of the world. I figure if I'm going to discard a belief structure - I'd better understand what I'm discarding. I'm probably pretty scary to Christian or Islamic literalists because I can rip their assertions to shreds using their own source data. But I'm usually amazed at what people don't know about their own religion or one they are actively against.