Do atheists believe anything in the Holy Bible?

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I’m a theist, I believe in God, I consider myself at least 60% Christian, but I don’t think anything in the Bible happened the way it was described.

In the first place, things get embellished in good stories. If you fail to embellish, then you’re not telling a properly good story. Just the way that works. Religions are intended to aid your personal mysticism, and scripture is way more useful in that regard than they are as a historical record, even if they claim to be. You’re supposed to read between the lines.

The people that wrote scripture didn’t really believe in history, they didn’t know what history was. History took another thousand years to properly invent, expecting the Bible to be 100% historical to be useful is like expecting your 2 year old’s coloring book to look like Van Gogh before you appreciate his creativity.

So, the Christians told the story of a Jesus that performed miracles. I believe that I can disbelieve in the miracles while still believing in the divinity of Jesus. I can also believe in the miracles. There’s no evidence either way, so I personally default to disbelieving in the supernatural acts while still believing in the divinity.

I personally don’t need God to burn a bush or part the Red Sea for me. My own personal mysticism is plenty enough for me. When I was a kid, I thought like an atheist and declared my lack of belief to my parents, who were surprisingly tolerant. Over the following 15 years I slowly recanted that position. I was just too curious and my experiences meditating and muscle testing eventually made holding on to disbelief impossible.

I didn’t start reading scripture until this year. I gotta say, the historicity of the source materials is utterly and completely immaterial to the question of belief and getting stuff out of it.