Oh boy! You have some answers! Let’s take a look to see how you fail.

1. You fail right out of the starting gate: “It’s right there in the quoted sentence.” That opening sentence is a line from a work of fiction! You, hilariously, think that this opening sentence is evidence for something! Wow. Apparently, you’re unfamiliar with circular thinking. A good version of it is this: “The Bible is true because the Bible says it’s true.” More: “Unless you are a small child, the book of Genesis, as we call it in English, is not about how the world was created, it’s about why it was created.” Once again you are in need of a helpful hint: Genesis is a story. More: “What matters is that it expresses the ‘will of God’ with respect to creation.” First, you have to establish that this god exists. You haven’t. Okay, so that’s failure number one. Let's move on to number two.
2. “Science, of course, assumes that there is a natural explanation for this event because science is about natural events. Religion is about faith.” Yes, that’s why I find faith useless. It doesn’t answer anything. What’s wrong with assuming there’s a natural (but currently unknown) event to explain the Big Bang? I wouldn’t be so dumb as to throw up my hands and say, “Well, golly. I don’t know what caused the Big Bang. It must mean that a Celestial Being caused it.” That would be a nutty thing to do (but it’s not nutty for religious people). More: “We can never know if the Big Bang was or was not the Will of God.” First, you have to establish that this god exists to even entertain that proposition. You haven’t.
3. C.S. Lewis answered nothing. The man dabbled in make-believe when he was writing novels and when he was getting all “theological” on us. Yes, of course the Bible is human-centric because humans wrote it.
4. “Social facts” are fine. We say that two people are married — and then we have the force of contract to make it a legal reality. But “holy” water? My point was that for those who believe in this fiction, they really think there’s something different about water that has been “blessed.” You write: “Holy water is holy because it’s been blessed.” Hilarious! I could go into a church, remove a vial of “holy” water and replace it with a vial of tap water — and nobody would know the difference. Case closed.
5. “There is no obtainable measurable data that would prove or disprove that the consecrated wafer has become anything more than a highly-regarded cracker.” Ah, a classic mistake that’s so common with believers. I, as a nonbeliever, don’t have to prove anything. All I have to do is say “I don’t believe you” when confronted with insufficient evidence for something. However, what is true is that a guy in a dress will utter some mumbo-jumbo accompanied by choreographed arm movements. That’s it. Nothing else has happened. To take the next step and bring in faith is to reveal a degree of mental distress, whereas a mentally healthy person would say a cracker is a cracker is a cracker and be done with it. But with regard to this moment of “consecration,” if you enjoy that kind of theater, hey, it’s your life. I’ll stick to Tom Stoppard, thank you very much. You write: “‘This is the body of Christ’ is a faith statement.” Yes, it is. It’s a particularly ludicrous and inane form of faith, but, hey, millions of people believe in this nonsense, so you’re not alone.
6. “One is our instinctive sense of morality, and the other is the moral commandments of God.” There are no “moral commandments” from a Celestial Being. All of our moral impulses, including altruism and empathy, can be explained by evolution. No “god” is needed.
7. “The Church needs to unravel nearly two millennia of accumulated canon in order to modernize its positions without blatantly contradicting long-held positions, some of which most people would support.” I have a better idea: The Church needs to close up shop, divest all of its holdings, and give the proceeds to the poor. Leave any discussion about abortion to a woman and her doctor. If any man (who’s not a doctor) wants to insinuate himself into the discussion, STFU is the appropriate response.
8. “Maybe that message doesn’t speak to you, but for crying out loud, even the ancient Hebrews wouldn’t have insisted that it was literally true.” That’s fine. So the Jonah story isn’t literally true. One of the reasons I wrote my essay is to address those people who do take these stories literally. And it’s not just the Jonah story. There are millions of people who think “Adam & Eve” existed. There are millions of people who believe in angels. Angels! Can you believe it? I don’t.
9. Heaven, Hell, Purgatory. “Does that mean that even Hitler goes to Heaven? Sure, but he’s got a long wait in Purgatory.” What’s the evidence that “Purgatory” exists? There is none. So why do you blather on about it? It’s make-believe. “There is a lot of talk about being burned up, but that is not an eternal torture.” Oh, gee, really? Like, you are privy to this? You have knowledge about this? That’s why believers like you are so funny. You spend all this time about Heaven and Hell and Purgatory and you go on and on about what people used to believe, and what they believe now, and what they never believed, and how beliefs have changed — and yet you don’t have the intellectual distance and wherewithal to realize that you may as well be giving me an analysis of The Lord of the Rings! Charles, get a grip! None of what you say here is of any value or meaning — except for a certain kind of bizarre entertainment. Let’s now move on to your final failure.
10. Look at this embarrassing sentence of yours: “Satan deceives people because they want to be deceived.” Wow. Do you really lack the ability to see that this remark is a comment about a fictional character? You may find that accusation repetitive, but how else can I frame this discussion? There is no difference between “Satan” and “Sauron” except to note the obvious: “Satan” is a fictional character whose exact provenance remains unknown to literary detectives (i.e., nobody know who first created this fictional character), and “Sauron” is a fictional character who can be traced to a man named J.R.R. Tolkien.

See, that’s your problem with all of your answers. You are so deep in the rabbit hole of belief that you can’t see that every argument based on something from the Bible is rooted in fiction, aka story telling. Mind you, there are some things in the Bible that are true. Pontius Pilate really existed. Fine. But my point is that just because there are things in the Bible that can be sourced to history, it doesn’t follow that the supernatural trash is true (and it’s the supernatural trash—chatty corpses, talking animals, “miracles” et al — that believers are drawn to the most. Hey, once again: Stories are fine. Stories can impart moral lessons. There’s nothing with imparting tales to elucidate or discuss how people ought to behave in the world. The mistake is believing the stories to be true.

Here’s an idea for an essay I could write: Why does anyone believe that some of these supernatural-flavored Bible stories are true? You spent a lot of time whaling on me for addressing things that many believers believe to be literally true. Earth to Charles: Most believers do believe that these things are literally true. Millions of people really do believe that all life was created in a few days’ time. Evolution is a fact, but millions of people really do believe otherwise on the basis of nothing more than… a belief. Millions of people really do believe that Earth is 10,000 years old (some say 6,000!). Millions of people really do believe there was a Garden of Eden with a talking serpent. Millions of people really do believe that there was a first human male and a first human female who, apparently, came into existence by way of Cosmic Snap of Fingers by some Unseen Deity (with a little help from some dust and a rib, you see). “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.” That’s the KJV, of course. From a literary perspective (the only perspective), it’s beautiful. Thing is, only a person who has severe mental issues would believe that this line has anything to do with reality.

Save your energy. Don’t direct your ire at me. Direct it at your fellow clowns of the literalist kind: How did it happen that anyone literally believes in this nonsense? Instead of getting all twisted up in your head with your torturous exegetical attempts for something that only amounts to a sprawling, multi-book novel, why not spend time figuring out why anyone anywhere would believe that flying invisible humanoids — otherwise known as “angels” — are real. Go investigate that. Wow, believers are something else. Right?

Let me close this by reproducing something you wrote but with some crucial edits:

Charles Forsythe’s response to Barry Lyons’s “Ten Questions That a Theist Can’t Answer” fits into the genre called literary analysis/exegesis except for the presence of a crucial and embarrassing error: Forsythe fails to see that his responses have nothing to do with the real world. Forsythe thinks he understands a topic but utterly fails to see that everything he’s written is rooted in fiction. After all, what mature person would actually believing in the existence of “Satan” or “angels”? His response is a lot like flat earthers who demand to know why people in Australia aren’t upside down when you see them on TV but with one crucial exception: flat earthers are the dumbest people on the globe. To be fair, people who believe in all this Biblical nonsense may not be dumb; they’re just deluded (and it’s a delusion that, in most cases, began with having been indoctrinated as a child).

I think that’s it. I enjoyed your failure and your amusing answers. Carry on.

Barry

P.S. I will leave you with a comment by Richard Dawkins. I’m going to assume that you know that the man is an atheist. But, see, he can enjoy the Bible for literary reasons. You can too.