I'm more fascinated by the concept of the Tree of Life. The story implies that Adam and Eve were not immortal- they had a finite lifespan. They had to have access to the Tree of Life if they wanted to continue to live. Yahweh is not above the most petty mechanisms of control.
The story does not read well if it is taken literally, as JWs do. A literal reading makes Yahweh something of an extortionist, dangling the Tree of Life in one hand and the Tree of Knowledge in the other. Take from one, lest ye run out of life. Take not from the other, or I shall deny thee access to the first one. Then he looks away as a snake tempts the hopelessly unprepared Eve into breaking god's rules. And finally, he curses humankind and even the planet itself, as punishment.
The story portrays him as a petty thug. A mean and unscrupulous person. A jerk. He creates a world, populates it with a pair of sentient beings, then places traps all around them. Their failure is inevitable, and he knows this. It's part of his plan to... build himself up as a savior????
Nothing about it reflects the actions of a considerate, kind, or caring person. Which makes the attempts at explanation even worse. I cannot accept that a loving being would do any of this. It is incoherent. It makes no sense. An impersonal and uncaring god might spawn a universe and leave it to its devices, leading to a world where suffering happens constantly and happiness is fleeting. That god is more likely to be real than Yahweh.
