Religious figures as fictional characters

Julian Sanchez expands on the idea posed by Jonathan Rée:

[Rée argues] the so-called New Atheists misunderstand religion when they treat it primarily as a set of truth-claims on par with a scientific theory. When we read or watch explicitly fictional stories, we sometimes talk about the “suspension of disbelief” that’s necessary to become truly immersed in a tale. We need to find the story, in some sense, “believable” in the sense that it has a kind of internal coherence, without being committed to it’s literal truth. This is the sense in which it’s “unrealistic” for Booster Gold to win a one-on-one fight against Darkseid, even though, of course, there’s nothing remotely realistic about either character.

When you think about the actual functions that religious narratives serve in people’s lives, literal truth or falsity is often rather beside the point, and yet suspension of disbelief is a necessary condition of immersion in the story. On this view, Richard Dawkins is a little like that guy who keeps pointing out that all the ways superhero physics don’t really make sense. 

Bertrand Russell negates it perfectly, albeit a great many years earlier: "There can't be a practical reason for believing what isn't true... either the thing is true or it isn't. If it is true, you should believe it, and if it isn't, you shouldn't."