It really rustles my jimmies how modern science communicators completely deny the existence of anything outside of the empirical world. Science is wonderful for saying how something works, but it can never give it meaning.

Goodness. This paragraph has a great density of defensive, slightly misconceived content.

"Deny the existence of..." is a loaded choice of words. It is a sentence that claims the existence of something that others deny, instead of being written neutrally like "Refuse to consider", closing the possibility that you are wrong.

Second, scientifically literate people understand that science is not a tool to disprove anything, but is the best way we know to actually prove what is real. If doesn't say "There is no evidence therefor it isn't true", but instead "There is currently insufficient evidence to prove it", and certainly not "There is some evidence for ____ but we deny it is true". No one has to deny anything, the burden of proof is on the maker of a claim.

Now, existence of anything outside of the empirical world... If you've got evidence for it, please submit it and claim your Nobel Prize. If you don't, how can you accept that it is true when there are TONS of beliefs, many of which are clearly wrong or mutually exclusive with other beliefs, with no rational way to decided between them? Intuition? Intuition is wrong habitually.

Science is wonderful for saying how something works, but it can never give it meaning.

This is a deepity, it attempts to sound wise and educated but doesn't actually mean anything real. Start by defining "meaning" and logically breaking that sentence down and you'll find scientific rationality behind anything we deem "meaningful". People find love meaningful... Well, we know why via the scientific method.

As for your first paragraph, which very strongly defends The Bible by turning it into personal metaphor... For the vast history of that book's existence (and even to this day), people have used it as a literal device to explain empirical "truth"s about the universe. It is only since it has been proven that many of its claims do not hold up with the universe as we observe it that this interpretation of personal truth. It makes truth claims that people accept and follow. You are right about the "incredibly personal" to the reader bit in that each person cherry picks different parts to be true and others metaphor, allowing the mind of God to always be what they themselves believe.