Paul, I am not excluding anything.  These things are excluded on there own by not existing.  If they start existing tomorrow, then we can put them back in.  I don't think we should pick what phenomenon are in or out (real or  metaphorical).  We should just observe reality and speak the truth about what we find.  The point of theology is not to change reality, but instead it simply describes our reality.  If you have some evidence that these things exist then I'll be the first to put them in.  I'd prefer it that way. Without that evidence, then lets just go with what is most practicle and most accepted given what we know at the present moment.  That is all we can do.

Paul, you said: I am far from being a literalist as far as the Bible goes (for example, I do not believe that the Genesis creation account is literally true) but your approach eviscerates the gospels: it leaves Jesus as someone comparable to Socrates or Buddha. The only question remaining is whether his ethical and social vision is superior to theirs.

Why would it be a bad thing to not be superior?  Why the need to compete?  Can you only follow Jesus IF and only IF he wins some kind of cosmic battle for supremacy? What is so bad about being compared to the Buddha?  Can you think for a minute how demeaning that sounds to Buddhists?  It seems to me that the Gospel writers go out of their way to present Jesus as coming from humble means even to the point of giving him an extremely humble birth story and even more demeaning death.

In my view, traditional Christianity eviscerates Jesus by turning him into an unbelievable proposition like the tooth fairy that could only exist inside a pre-modern mind.   Can we please have more respect for Jesus than to turn him into some thing so trivial as a "god".  Can we raise him up to a higher level so his words can be treated as valuable and timeless rather than ancient and irrelevant?

 The answers to your 7 questions are pretty easy to see but it requires removing that ancient worldview as a lens.  After removing that lens, the transformational power of Jesus comes alive.