Well Joe, I think I was the first in the thread to say I thought evolution was true (in its basic tenets). As for religious stories, I've said that I agree that they can be inspirational and can inform our present-day lives (I said very nice things about what Jesus allegedly said, remember!) I accept your interpretation that stories can be true to themselves even if unfounded strictly historically. But I do think this needs to be stressed in the passing-on of these stories. If something is unlikely to be literally true, then I think it's incumbent on the narrator to make that clear to the recipient. This is so routinely not done in religious "education" that we even have such absurd phrases in our language as "the gospel truth." Far too many people believe in the literal truth of the Bible. Ironically, stories that are just so, stories, can have even more powerful messages when presented from the honest standpoint of their not being necessarily the literal truth, mainly because the veil of suspicion of deception has been lifted.