"Author Paul Alan Laughlin, a liberal Christian, drew an analogy between the story of Genesis 3 and "a more modern scenario." The following parable is based on his tale:

A woman bakes a batch of cookies for a party. She warns her twins, aged 3, to not eat any. She explained to them, deceitfully, that if they did, then she would kill them. Not thinking things through carefully, she placed the cookies on a table, easily accessible to the twins. A brother who was older, wiser and more mature than the twins asked whether their mother had forbidden them to eat anything in the house. The girl twin, Edna, said that mother had only forbidden them to eat the cookies -- on pain of death. The older brother chuckled and told his sister that parents did that a lot. He said: "Of course she wouldn't kill you. She simply wants to deny you the pleasure of munching on the cookies. She doesn't want to share the cookies. She wants to keep them all to herself." Edna does exactly what any adult could predict: she eats one. Then, she persuades her twin brother Albert to eat another.

The mother returns, not aware of the twin's disobedience. She notices crumbs on the table and on the twins' lips. She correctly concludes that the twins have eaten cookies. She flies into a rage, physically punishes and handicaps them, then throws them out of the house to fend for themselves. She cuts them out of her will. She then does all she can to make the lives of any future descendents of the twins miserable."


Any parent who acts like this lacks love, compassion, intelligence or morals, yet this is exactly how God acts in the Genesis story of Adam and Eve. A possible Christian defence, in order to try and keep God as the good guy, would be that God then rectified the situation by sending his son out to retrieve his children. But this could all have been averted if God was simply a better parent in the first place!

I wouldn't wish god as the parent of my worst enemy. And billions of people seriously want so desperately to spend eternity with such a parent!    I wish them all the best.