Clearly in my opinion. That's why I've stopped trying to figure out what the actual truth is and just focused on trying to learn the ways of the universe, as weird as that sounds. I don't like using the word God because that almost makes it seem as if Zeus is in the clouds throwing lightning bolts and trying to control the world.
I went to Catholic School up through college. One of the most rewarding classes I ever took was Freshman Theology class in high school. We had to study the Bible but we approached it historically. We'd discuss carbon dating of the actual scriptures that composed the Bible. We'd discuss who the authors most likely were. If they were educated middle class, or upper class, wealthy, etc. We'd discuss what geographic area the books were most likely written in and what the political and current events were at the time and try and pick up the issues that were important to the author of say Genesis instead of simply being told, "God meant this in this line and this is why we practice things this way in church!" It was really interesting. At the end of the semester, the big message we were supposed to get out the class had nothing really to do with religion. It was that these books gave us a window to observe what was important in the author's mind. You're getting a historically relevant perspective of the important issues that were going in the author's life. Ever since then, every single book I read, I like to read up the biography of the author if s/he has one. It's really interesting picking apart a fictional book and then comparing what issues were going on in the author's life. You read about a relationship hardship in a good book only to discover that the author at the time he wrote the book was grieving over the loss of a parent, or a child, or going through a divorce. I personally get more out of it that way.
I'm 29 years old now so that was roughly fourteen years ago. I'm not exactly religious so it's been awhile. But I'll give an example that's probably not entirely accurate because it's been awhile. When we studied the New Testament, we of course covered the the Gospels. The oldest Gospel is the book of Mark. The book was supposed to cover Jesus as a human. Miracles were performed, but not as many as were done in the book of John or any other Gospel. The author, put more personal claim in the human side of Jesus instead. The book was written some 60 years after Jesus died. Given the life span of people back then, the story of Christ had to have been told through at least two generations. Mark was not an eye witness to Christ's story is all I'm trying to say. I think the book of Mark was actually written by two authors even but not sure on that. I forget what the political themes were that the author was concerned with, but I'm sure you can find sources online that talk about it. I try to do it with all books though. Even non-fictional ones. I read Man's Search for Himself which is more of a psychiatrist's case studies with patients. You can tell the book was written in the 50s and that the trending political events at the time was nuclear warfare, World War 3 and apocalyptic mayhem. Read Dosteovsky whose books are filled with conflict in relationships and self analysis. Compare them with his very interesting life story and it's easy to see where much of his inspiration came from. He was a very tragic author that lived a very tragic life in my opinion. It just made his books all the more enriching though.
