You may call them fairy stories, Dave. I call them sacred myths that embody the ideals that religious people seek. Literalists cannot understand or respect myth. This is what strident atheists and religious fundamentalists have in common - they have no sense of poetry and cannot see beyond the literal interpretation of things, and they cannot respect ideas other than their own.

Just a thought - but surely the literalists are the ones who seek these elusive religious ideals in Myths and 'Fairy Stories' thus missing the point? Away from that sort of literalism, Myths operate on a level more akin to poetry in the sense of ostranenie that a more literary approach reveals. I would argue such an approach is more respectful to the material of myth / fairy story which becomes a window to ideas far greater than our own - and far greater than anything 'religious' as such. Religious thinking is 'literalism' that holds (say) the creation found in Genesis to be 'true' / 'metaphorical' in an actual sense rather than just a story. The literalist / religious person (fundamentalist or otherwise) believes it to be the Word of God, thus missing the true beauty of the thing which is entirely human.