If we leave the field of religion to the literalists of the far right, and continue to allow the Christian Coalition to take over school boards, our children will be learning creation science in school, we will be stoning adulteresses, and depending on how carefully they read, killing rebellious sons and sacrificing animals in the public square. Holy writ, or sacred scripture is present in almost all literate cultures. And in non-literate cultures, the equivalent is passed down orally. Often, scripture is believed to be of supernatural revelation, somehow channeled by human beings. I agree with Walt Whitman that all bibles have grown out of us, and will continue to do so, but that does not diminish their divinity.
All human efforts are flawed.
As in other endeavors, good scripture will stand the test of time. The Bible we use today consists of sixty-six separate books, written by many different people over a period of at least a thousand years. The canon, or the collection of books which made it into the bible, was fixed, or closed in 367 of the common era. Of course, not everyone agreed about what to include. These books are included in the canon for Roman Catholics and Greek Orthodox Christians.