Thanks for responding Prudence. A few comments. You are absolutely right about human value now baked into our culture and understanding and seen in humanism. Humanism, after all, is a wayward child of Christian thinking. Charles Taylor also makes this point in A Secular Age.
Re our fall and choices, my understanding of the fall is that while the disobedience of early humans (Adam and Eve figures) caused deep repercussions including impact on the relationship between all humans and their creator, it is not accurate to say we do not participate in that. We make many choices of our own free will that replicate and reflect the earliest disobedience.
Hell is indeed a tension and I will write on this soon. My own view is taken from C.S. Lewis, particulary his marvelous book The Great Divorce. It can be summarized in this simple formula: there are only two kinds of people--those who say to God Thy will be done, and those to whom God says, finally, Thy will be done. I do think this represents God's incredibly high value of the individual, even to the point of allowing them to make free choices damning themselves. (I do not, however, believe in eternal torment other than the torment of being separated from God.)
As for the allegory of the fall, I do see the biblical story as mythical in the sense that it provides a story with deep meaning (and truth) without necessarily being accurate as history. However, to lose the meaning of the fall as the intentional, knowing act of human creatures rejecting their creator and his guidance, is essential. It cannot be a literary device. As has been said, the empirical evidence for sin and evil is rather clear.
Christianity as a belief system is inextricably linked to historical events. While a great many, including wonderful Christians I know, would prefer to treat Jesus as a guru and teacher, I stand again with Lewis who famously said he was either who he said he was or he was a crazy man on the level of someone who claimed to be a poached egg.
Great questions, and I'll respond more in some upcoming posts.
