Notice in the story of the Garden of Eden that Jehovah shifts the blame for the frightful condition of the cosmos he created onto Adam. This blame-shifting god tells us that it is on account of Adam eating the fruit that the earth is cursed and pain-filled. (See Genesis 3:17-19)
The universe is a place of suffering and pain, where life can only come forth from death! In order to feed themselves, all living things kill and eat each other, bringing terror, pain, and death to one another. Even herbivores live by killing plants. Disease-causing microbes and viruses abound by the countless trillions, killing untold millions in horrible deaths. Hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, flood, famine, fire, pestilence, drought, tidal waves, gigantic meteor strikes that cause planet-wide extinction, all prove that death and violence are designed into this material universe! It didn’t become this way, it was created this way!
For those who insist on seeing the universe through rose-colored glasses, I will use the rose as a perfect example of the nature of this material universe created by the blind god, Samael/Jehovah. A rose is extremely beautiful, with an exquisite fragrance. Yet it possesses thorns that will stab you and make you bleed!
The universe is not a friendly place, and never has been, regardless of the lies to the contrary of the god Samael/Jehovah. The universe itself was born in a gigantic incomprehensibly violent explosion we call The Big Bang. Entire galaxies collide. Stars grow old and explode, destroying all the planets circling them. Our star, the sun, will one day explode and destroy all it's planets. The universe itself, and everything in it, was created to die! This is called entropy. Are we to suppose that because Adam ate a piece of fruit that the entire unfathomable universe went from being a nice friendly place where there was no pain, suffering, violence, or death, to it's current condition?
Am I to suppose that the saber-tooth tiger and T-Rex were once gentle herbivores who suddenly sprouted fangs and became ferocious carnivores when Adam ate the fruit? Am I to be so gullible as to believe that a supposedly Omnipotent God is not responsible for it's own creation, but can shift the blame for it's mistakes onto it's finite creatures? Not only are the beliefs of fundamentalists childish and silly, they are insulting to anyone with even average intelligence and education. Yet, millions of fundamentalist Christians believe those very things! There is a world of difference between childlike faith and childish beliefs.
Evangelicals and fundamentalists pride themselves on being true to the "letter" (the literal interpretation) of the Bible, yet they would be hard-pressed to find any early Christian writers who did not interpret the Genesis story of Adam and Eve as an allegory. Even the staunch biblicist Saint Augustine interpreted the Genesis tale as an allegory. Fundamentalists and evangelicals think of themselves as representing primitive, original Christianity. Yet their crude literalism would be foreign indeed to the highly diverse, often highly sophisticated early church they so revere, yet are utterly ignorant of. They do not comprehend that "the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life." 2 Corinthians 3:6.