I do not try to convince myself of anything. The scientific method is to take a hypothesis and try to disprove it. If you cannot do this, it is more likely to be true.
Biblical scholarship assumes that scripture is true, even if it is somewhat absurd (like two of every animal on the Ark), and then tries to figure out how, despite any apparent absurdity, scripture can be true.
All valid scientific inquiry starts by assuming that the actual truth is unknown. It acknowledges that some of the truth may be unknowable, but it tries to ferret out all the truth anyway.
If you pray to a God before you read the scripture, you are demonstrating that you believe before you even ask any question about the scripture. You will not find valid scientific answers that way.
It is valid to read literature from the standpoint of those for whom it is written. You can read the work of the Romans and Greeks assuming that they believed X, Y and Z about Jupiter, Zeus, Ares or Mars. You can read the Bible assuming that it was written for believers of this or that, to better understand the authors, but that is literary inquiry, not scientific inquiry, as the subjects of the inquiry are the minds and points of view of the authors.