In a recent post (http://dangerousintersection.org/?p=166 [1]), I discussed God’s attractive nuisance in His garden of Eden: the Tree of Knowledge. Let’s take that discussion one step farther. Not only did God plant his deadly tree smack in the middle of His garden (bad garden design), not only did He fail to put a barrier fence around his deadly tree (bad barrier design), but why did He then give the Tree its appealing name, “Tree of Knowledge” (bad label design)? According to the Bible, Eve ate the apple because she wanted to gain wisdom, so God’s name for the Tree obviously played a key role in her decision. Why didn’t God simply call His tree something less appealing? Indeed, why didn’t God call His tree what it was: the Tree of Death? Even with the Tree planted in the middle of His garden, even with no fence around it, God might have dissuaded Adam and Eve from eating its fruit with a simple name change. Unfortunately, God botched that, too. God was like a parent who stores poisons in the house, fails to keep the poisons locked in a cabinet, fails to put “Mr. Yuk” stickers on the poisons, fails to prevent His children from playing near the poisons, fails to adequately supervise His children when they do so, then refuses to take the blame (indeed, blames His children) when His children die of poisoning.
This raises the question: if God could not even PLANT A TREE without violating every rule of good human factors design (not to mention obvious elements of criminal negligence), then why should anyone believe that living creatures are the result of God’s “intelligent design?”
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