I think you betray your lack of understanding by categorizing any religious belief aside from fundamentalism as "cherry picking whatever pieces of the bible...". There is a 2,000 year old tradition of hermeneutic interpretation of the bible, resulting in dozens of different, more nuanced approaches to reading and thinking about the book. But you've brushed all that aside as "cherry picking" so that your criticism can still be coherent without having to make any effort to learn more than you already know. You must maintain a narrow, simplistic definition of religion in order to retain confidence in your belief system. Isn't that a bit backwards?

One individual making up a story about a turtle is not a religion. Religions emerge from thousands of years of collective human consciousness. The stories are told and retold from millions of mouths to millions of ears. You understand that input to a human's cognitive system can shape their perception, consciousness, behavior, of course? These stories and characters have accompanied us through every technological revolution from agriculture to smartphones. Repeated through countless generations, they have literally shaped us as a species. With that suggestion in mind, can you really confront the idea that God is "The Word", and that we are "made in his image", without even a tiny amount of awe and wonder?