"The allegory pit is too commodious, is ready to swallow up so much more than one wants to put into it. If the story of the temptation is an allegory [...] then the Pauline version of the Fall may be allegorical, and still more the words of consecration of the Eucharist, or the promise of the second coming; in fact, there is not a dogma of ecclesiastical Christianity the scriptural basis of which may not be whittled away by a similar process."

Thomas Henry Huxley, "Agnosticism and Christianity," quoted in (Chapter 1: "Thomas Henry Huxley: Gladiator-General for Science," pp. 34 (Prometheus Books, 2011))

Huxley has keenly identified the central difficulty of Christian belief: a literal acceptance of the Bible entails immense difficulties because many of its stories are, by current understanding, incredible, but an attempt to brush these stories under the rug presents the possibility that all the Bible stories can be brushed under the rug, leaving the believer with nothing. (Chapter 1: "Thomas Henry Huxley: Gladiator-General for Science," pp. 34-35 (Prometheus Books, 2011))