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ECHIDNE OF THE SNAKES: Fairness And Other Nonsense in the Gospels:

...Religions also have wonderful aspects, great messages and the ability to help those who suffer. At the same time, humans interpret presumed divine words (or their ideas of those) pretty poorly, on the whole. We are very clever at stressing the bits we like and ignoring the bits we don't like. Those who support literal readings of holy books are not much bothered by the fact that they talk about aspects of cultures which existed centuries ago and sometimes refer to very specific historic events or by the fact that literal readings are ultimately not feasible, because of both the internal inconsistencies they create and because of the problems of interpreting the meanings of ancient languages today.

What are you going to nail your view of life to? That might be the ultimate question which religions try to answer, but as the case of Erick Erickson demonstrates, the answer depends on the wielder of the hammer.