You know, it sounds alot like you haven't yet abandoned the YEC view that
Genesis must be 100% historically correct, otherwise nothing in the Bible
can be trusted. The only major difference is that you are willing to accept
the scientific view of natural history as the basis for this historical
account. Personally, I applaud your efforts to reconcile Scripture with
natural history, but when it leads to statements like "I also think that if
[certain] arguments [regarding the allegorical nature of Genesis] are true,
there is little of objective reality to be found
within Christianity....", I feel that it may be giving you a warped
perception.
Two things need to be understood to accept Genesis as allegory without
loosing faith in Christ. The first is that the Old and New Testaments do
not represent prophecy and its fulfillment, but two separate religious
accounts that have been artificially forced together because the followers
of the new religion were converts from the old, a situation unique in
religious history. This realization should allow you to separate your
Christian faith from your scholastic curiosity, because it allows you to
treat the historical and theological accounts of the New Testament as
separate from the accounts in the Old Testament, though not necessarily as
independent.
The second is that the Old Testament is not the work of God, but of men
trying to relay the message of God to all mankind (as they saw it). As
such, these authors could have incorporated accounts they knew were myths
and legends, even complete fictions, along with histories, law codes, poems,
philosophical and theological treatises, if they believed that these
accounts helped to convey some part of that message. This realization
should allow you to separate your appreciation of the Bible as a source of
religious doctrine from your appreciation of scientific natural history,
because it allows you to treat each as separate domains independent of the
other, such that revelation in one cannot contradict revelations in the
other.
I am not trying to dictate to you what you should believe; that is between
you and God. But I doubt God would be particularly angry if you took a more
liberal view of the question of Scriptural literature. Just something to
chew on.
Kevin L. O'Brien