I like the Gnostic explanation that the being who created the material universe was a lesser deity of some sort (I think they call it evil but I’d probably go with chaotic or something). It made people to have intelligent-ish beings to interact with, and it put the Trees of “Knowledge of God & Evil” and “Life” in the Garden (for some reason) but didn’t want Adam & Eve to become knowledgeable & immortal.

In this telling, the “Serpent” is Jesus by which they mean the physical projection of the actual highest actually all powerful, all loving, etc etc god, and it wants to free A&E so it convinced them to eat the fruit.

Yes, but not right away.

We can see that during Trump 2.0 is taking longer but we are growing our opposition.

Remember the Muslim ban and the immediate reaction at airports in 2017? We’re seeing similar things now (farther into the term) with reactions to ICE.