Hi Mycha, (nice name),
The path you have chosen can seem a little scary some times, but many people have taken it and ended up with a stronger and broader faith that encompasses science and faith without contradiction.
Stepping outside of your Fundamentalist beginnings is a first step, but you will need to replace that with a supportive faith community and a lot more information. Mainstream Christianity, as distinct from Fundamentalism, should be able to provide that. However, I am not sure what you mean when you say that an Anglican affiliation has opened up more doubt in your mind. If you can explain what you mean, others may able to be helpful.
Generally speaking, faith is not held in the absence of doubt, but in the face of it. It sometimes helps to know that those who don’t believe in a God are also involved in an act of faith. What if they are wrong?
When it comes to Biblical literature, the same phenomena occur as in English language and literature (and other languages, of course). Literature takes different forms and is meant to be read in different ways. When the author of the poem, “The Highway Man”, states “the Moon was a ghostly galleon …”, he wasn’t suggesting that Earth’s natural satellite was made of wood. In the same way, there are different genres of literature in the Bible, and they are not all meant to be read as if they were to be taken literally. Coming to terms with that requires gaining a familiarity with other literature that is contemporaneous with the Biblical literature, such as the Mesopotamian creation stories. We cannot assume that the genres of an ancient literature were exactly the same as those in English today. This brings us to a discussion of things like “myth”. What do we mean by the word “myth”. Unfortunately, there are two different meanings of the word “myth”. In common usage the word “myth” often means something is false or untrue. Like the saying, “today’s medical facts are tomorrow’s medical myths”. However, a technical meaning of the word “myth” is of a story that conveys the values of the society which created it. It should be approached in the way an indigenous person once said of his people’s stories, “I don’t know whether this story actually happened, but I know that it is true.” Obviously the truth conveyed here is not a literal truth, but a real and important one, nevertheless.
However, with undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in science under your belt, and doctoral studies in science underway, I’d suggest that you approach things from the scientific side, rather than the theological. An interesting resource person for you might be Alister McGrath. McGrath was an atheist who commenced doctoral studies in biology and his studies converted him to faith in Christ. He went on to gain three earned doctorates and is a prolific writer in the field of science and faith. He became an Anglican clergyman in a country in which the Anglican Church is still called the “Church of England”. (England!)
It helps to know that science has always played an important role in mainstream Christianity – a fact about which Fundamentalism has been blissfully unaware. Science used to be called “Natural Philosophy”, and since in Christian thought God is the Creator of Nature, the study of Nature has for centuries been seen as a source of revelation about God. The study of “Natural Philosophy” gave rise to the study of “Natural Theology”. This gave rise centuries ago to the theology of the Two Books – the Book of Scripture and the Book of Nature. And Christians have for the past two millennia argued about the relationship between the two “Books”!
I read The Language of God and didn’t get a lot out of it. McGrath’s books have been more helpful to me: Darwinism and the Divine. Evolutionary Thought and Natural Theology; takes an historical approach and helps one to avoid the mistakes of the past in thinking through this field of thought. The Open Secret. A New Vision for Natural Theology; is another worthy of your time. See McGraths website here: https://alistermcgrath.org/
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