So even though I'm an atheist, I was went to a catholic middle school, mostly because the public schools in the area were pretty bad.
Anyways, according to the religion teacher there, most of the Old Testament is supposed to be metaphorical. According to her, the only part of the bible that was actually supposed to have taken place was the New Testament. I have no idea if that's actually true about Catholicism or whether that's just her personal beliefs, but when I hear some of the more rational thinking I'm a bit less anti-religion.
I don't actually think it actually makes religion more palatable. It seems to me that they are just taking the parts of the Bible (or any other holy book) that don't agree with their worldview/reality out, so they can believe whatever they want no matter the evidence to the contrary. Even if we manage to conclusively disprove (using time machines or whatever) 99% of everything in the bible, they can just claim that all those parts are metaphor.
Whats that? We have proved the world is far over 6000 years old? Well then, obviously the world being only 6000 years old is just a metaphor. Of course, every other thing in the Bible is still meant literally (until its proved false beyond a shadow of a shadow of a doubt).
It just seems intellectually dishonest to me. Instead of abandoning their whole view once it has been proven false (since even a single inaccuracy in a infallible book would mean that it isn't infallible at all), they abandon the parts that are proven false and claim that they were always false, while everything else remains true.