Tunesmith, you and others have questioned if it's appropriate to expose children to religious stories without explaining that they're not factual. Well, I taught my children bible stories the same way I teach bible study, and the same way I tell any story: I respect the integrity of the story - I just tell it, without any caveats or prior explanations or saying "this really isn't true."
I find that fiction IS true, often more true than non-fiction, because it expresses ideas rather than mere facts.
So, I tell the story, and then sometimes I work with the audience to explore the meaning of the story. I don't give caveats and consumer warnings when I sing traditional songs, either.

Part of that involves respecting the intelligence of my audience. Most people - especially children - seem to be able to tell fact from fiction, and they seem to be able to see the truth that can be expressed in fiction, without explanation.

So, I don't distract from the story by dwelling on what's factually true and what's not. In Scripture, it's sometimes not absolutely clear what's factual and what's not - and the factuality of the story is not the point. Now, if I brought my kids up to be fundamentalists and drilled it into their heads that every word in the Bible was factually true, that would be another matter. But I didn't. I taught my kids to think for themselves, and they did not grow up believing that the Scriptures were factually true, and I didn't have to warn them every time I opened my mouth to speak about religion.

Some people are literalists. They are only able to see the absolute, literal meaning of things, and they are unable to think their way down into the deeper meaning of stories and events and observations. They see only the surface, and they insist that surface observation must be the absolute truth. Many of the religion discussions here at Mudcat have been limited to that literalist perspective, dominated by people who insist that since something is not literally true, it must be false. This thread has gotten past that literalism to a great extent, and for that I am very happy.

-Joe-