>Even without considering any of this above, the commentators on this text you refer to always refer to the literal English text we have in front of us. They take the text and come up with a conclusion that is absolutely contrary to the imminent English context of the text. And they don't question the accuracy of the text itself, and yet any child can spot their blatant error. If somebody says he does not believe it at all, that is one thing I can understand. But if someone says the text means one thing while the text says literally quite the opposite, I wonder where he has left his brains.
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>Like this are many things related to faith: It is either true or it is untrue. But people like to settle somewhere in the middle so they can switch sides at the appropriate time if someone comes to call for it.

IME such dichotomies are very often artificial or sometimes willfully declared to make a distinction or set a border, masking an underlying interval scale. I try to find the "grey areas" where I go almost totally by belief due to no data and also try to consciously probe the area of "common wisdom" for perhaps underlying motives making such "wisdom" suspect. When data is null, refraining from calculation is best - and if you have to calculate, faith is employed, or to say it in a more agnostic manner, in random choice the chance for picking truth exists if it is in the set of choices ;-)

But to my world view having one totally sacrosanct book to be taken literally in every sentence calls for a very petulant almighty god - which I refuse to believe in. IF there is a singular, monotheistic god following the broad judaistic/christian/islamic blueprint, I sure hope he thinks of holy books more in line with Bahai tradition - there are some books with religous context and truth - like Quran *and* Bible -, written by prophets who have a better grip on such matters than most.