"I always thought that about the Garden of Eden story," said Ford.

"Eh?"

"Garden of Eden. Tree. Apple. That bit, remember?"

"Yes of course I do."

"Your God person puts an apple tree in the middle of a garden and says do what you like guys, oh, but don't eat the apple. Surprise surprise, they eat it and he leaps out from behind a bush shouting 'Gotcha'. It wouldn't have made any difference if they hadn't eaten it."

"Why not?"

"Because if you're dealing with somebody who has the sort of mentality which likes leaving hats on the pavement with bricks under them you know perfectly well they won't give up. They'll get you in the end."

Don't forget that god is supposedly all knowing and all seeing. So he knew his was going to happen anyway, watched it happen, and then swooped in to punish them knowing full well it was his fault and could have intervened at any point.

Unless of course, Satan is more powerful than god?

Only if you left their bowl balanced on the tip of a pencil to begin with.

Whole thing was a setup.

It's the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. How are you supposed to know the Lord is good if you don't know what good is?

The incest issue is actually an artifact of the religion initially not being monotheistic. Each region had their own religion and they were all treated as equally valid (at least by early Jewdaism), so the creation story was basically "God created a paradise (and everything else) and two people in that paradise, but then they got kicked out and had to go live with all the other people made by all the other gods". Adam and Eve had Cain and Abel, Cain killed Abel, so it was pretty much just Cain that carried on that legacy.

Then, eventually they went monotheistic but didn't/couldn't resolve the issues that introduced with the earlier stories (Noah's story also has similar issues, though I'm not sure it also once had a resolution of "other gods made more people" or if the resolution involved smacking anyone who brought up the question).

None of it's that fucked up if you interpret it as a creation story that's about why things are the way they are rather than something that literally happened.

Creation stories do tend to involve incest because there weren't many folks around. And you're not meant to worry about understanding of deceit because it's explaining why life isn't perfect and served that function perfectly well.

Of course, this still presents a problem for literal believers. But they're a minority (and have been for hundreds of years).

Forbidden leaf

Makeshift bidet.

bath

There are two types of people in the world. People who love to eat/getting their ass eaten.. And liars.