I'd add that in fact there is no indication in Genesis, or elsewhere in the Bible, that the creation account (in fact there are two creation accounts, Gen 1:1-2:3 and 2:4-25 - note that in the first God makes the world followed by men and women, but in the second he makes man, then the world around him, then the woman) is not intended by its author to be taken literally.
The question is not whether it is a *metaphor*. It's not a metaphor. The question is whether it's *true*. I'd say it isn't, and so would most Christians today. As I have said elsewhere, there is no rule that says all Christians must believe every word of the Bible to be true (any more than there is a rule that says all Americans must believe every word of the US constitution to be perfect).
Now, you can certainly say that this account, as it stands, is not true as an account of the world; but you can still derive useful teaching from it. For example, it expresses the notion that nothing exists without God's desire for it to exist. The story is not a *metaphor* for that teaching, but it does express that teaching, and you don't have to believe the story in order to believe that teaching. That's why Christians who reject it as literally true still find value in it, as well as in other parts of the Bible that they do not believe are literally true.
Once again, in response to SOG's points above about believing some parts of the Bible and not others, let me warn against the danger of "reifying" the Bible (making it into a "thing"). The Bible is a collection of books, not a single book. Not all Christians even agree which books make it up. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church has several books in the Bible that no-one else accepts. The Roman Catholic Church takes the Apocrypha to be canonical, although with some reservations, although Protestants reject it. Note, in particular, that the reason why Protestants reject the Apocrypha (which was used by the Church right up to the Reformation) was that they believed that it was not part of the "original" Jewish Scriptures. They wanted the original Bible that Jesus would have known, so they rejected these "additional" books. In fact, of course, there was no standard Jewish canon in Jesus' day: it was in the late first century and thereafter (as Judiasm became rabbinical) that the Jews decided on the content of their Scriptures - at exactly the same time that the Christians were. So the "Jewish Scriptures" were not decided any earlier than the Catholic ones, making the Protestant basis for accepting the former canon over the latter utterly spurious.
Also, of course, some Christian figures have argued about these things. Martin Luther famously relegated the epistle of James to an appendix - pronouncing it non-canonical - because it contradicted his doctrine of salvation by faith alone. Dionysius the Great, an important theologian of the third century, argued that Revelation should not be in the New Testament because, by studying the language and ideas of the book, he concluded (rightly, as modern scholarship has shown) that it was not by St John. Note, incidentally, that Luther based his notion of which books should be part of the Bible on doctrinal grounds, and that Dionysius did so on grounds of authorship. Neither believed in some great divine revelation which had laid down in stone which books are part of the canon. They both realised that it is down to the church to decide how to treat the various books and other texts which it possesses, and whether to call some of them Scripture and others not. And that is precisely what they did.
Now, as I say, your views on Genesis and your views on the Gospels have nothing to do with each other. Do you suppose that New Testament scholars, when they study a section of John and ask whether it really happened or not, begin by wondering about Genesis? Of course not. They have nothing to do with each other. The church - or at least, most of the church (since the early Syrian church didn't use any of the canonical Gospels at all, preferring the Diatesseron of Tatian, which amalgamated them all) - regards Genesis as Scripture, and it also regards John as Scripture. It does not follow from that that Genesis and John are parts of the same text; neither does it follow that both should be regarded identically in every way.
But even if this weren't true, and even if the Bible were a single book, written by a single author, it still would not follow that rejecting the truth of Genesis would entail rejecting the truth of John. That's not how we normally behave when faced with books or any other sources of information. We do not have to choose between two options, one where the source is 100% true and infallible and one where it is 100% untrustworthy. Most things fall somewhere in the middle. For example, I'm watching Sky News today (I have to - it's my job - not by choice!) and they said something that I knew for a fact was wrong. Does it follow that nothing on Sky News is true? Of course not. It just means that you have to turn your brain on when watching and not blindly assume that "If they say it, it must be true." Similarly, if we're talking about ancient texts, is everything in Caesar's "Gallic Wars" true? Of course not. It's self-serving and partial. But does it follow that the whole thing is a tissue of lies? Again, of course not. Caesar was in the middle of it and wrote from experience and has much to tell us of value. You just need to keep your brain on as you read it, and look at other sources as well.
This is how we normally behave in everyday life. We do not normally act as though some sources are infallible and others are totally untrustworthy, and we will come a cropper if we do. To address SOG again, who I think is a pretty reasonable person, I'm sure I have said some things in my posts that you agree with (such as saying above that there is no Scriptural support for interpreting Genesis 1-2 as a metaphor). And I've no doubt said things that you don't agree with, too. But aren't you capable of telling the difference? You know which ones you agree with and which you don't. You don't have to ask yourself who I am or what authority I have to make such judgements - you simply evaluate what I say and judge accordingly. And the same is true of the Bible. Christians don't have an infallible, inerrant, single text from the hand of God himself - but they don't need one, either. The Bible they have is perfectly good enough if it is read sensibly and intelligently. There is no need to try to make it into something it is not.
