Nice! I love your interpretation of the Bible, or at least the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, as a parable meant to serve as a guide for coming into being as a human, or to at least get you to think about it; it's a puzzle, a mystery, as you say. Love that interpretation as it isn't one I've thought about or heard about. But, as you say as well, it's one of hundreds, maybe thousands of existing interpretations and, as such, the same can be said about many books. The oldest story, as far as I've been able to discover, is the story of Gilgamesh, which has many similarities with some parts of the Christian Holy Book, and it's even said that the story of the Flood is copied, sort of, from that earlier epic. Read: Did the Bible 'Borrow' the Noah's Ark Story From the Epic of Gilgamesh?.

I'll suggest a couple of other epics here that teach us many valuable lessons about the human condition, while being complete fantasy and science fiction: Lord of the Rings, Dune, Earthsea, Foundation... And I could go on. Writing and other forms of narration are essential to being human, in that storytelling is the numero uno way we examine and transfer the (assumed) deeper truths about our individual and collective mode of existence in the world and the universe. Life and mere existence are indeed deep mysteries worthy of such artistic exposure and examination; I couldn't agree more. I must admit that it's refreshing to see someone view the Holy Bible in that light.

But, and here's where I also include some of your responses, this says exactly nothing about the existence of a God, the God of the Old Testament, or any other being responsible for existence. And the Bible isn't seen, by your typical Christian, in the same light as any other book that's equally capable of teaching us life lessons or unveiling the deeper mysteries of life, the universe, and everything. Life's a mystery because there are no certainties in life. Life and existence are, as you say, deep mysteries, puzzles. And man is a curious being, man, as you say, is driven to solve puzzles. And man has devised a method to at least try to solve the mysteries of life and existence: science. Science does not deal in certainties, it only gives the best possible explanations on any given field or subject, and these explanations are always open for amendment or revision. There's no fact of evolution or a fact of the Big Bang, there's only a theory of evolution and a Big Bang theory. A "theory" is the highest attainable grade of certainty, if you will, attainable in science: most hypotheses stay just that, hypotheses, even in the face of a flood of evidence.

I also take issue with Terence McKenna's (and your?) assertion that the Big Bang is the "one free miracle of science", and William Lane Craig's popularization of the Kalam Cosmological Argument. Science says about the beginning of the universe that we don't know yet how the universe began. The Big Bang is only the beginning of the expansion of our, known universe, the expansion of a singularity that contained all the ingredients of observable spacetime. What came before and if something came before, we simply do not know. The Kalam Cosmological argument is centuries old and says nothing about (a) God. It's a rather simple and intuitive deductive argument where the conclusion must be true, given that the premises are true.

1. Everything that begins to exist must have a cause,
2. the universe began to exist,
3. conclusion: the universe has a cause.

That's it. Craig omits that there is much disagreement about the validity of both premises, which renders the argument unsound. Much of his defense is based on the supposed impossibility of infinity in the real world and the impossibility of an infinite regress of causes. When does a human begin to exist? When his parents fall in love? At conception? When he breathes his first breath of air? When does a chair begin to exist? When it's designed? When the trees are cut down and the wood is cut into the pieces that make up the chair? The first time someone sits on it? In both cases, the end product can be seen as a simple, or very, very complicated rearrangement of previously existing materials. Here's an alternative argument:

1. Everything that begins to exist is a rearrangement of things that already exist,
2. the universe began to exist,
3. conclusion: the universe is a rearrangement of things that already exist.

In so far as keeping true to what we actually observe in our corner of the cosmos this alternative argument is way better, but Craig would rebut that it fails as an argument for the beginning of the universe as it'll make us stumble over infinite regress. But it's much closer to what the Big Bang actually says, namely that it's the beginning of the expansion of the previously existing singularity. If you take a little time to look it up, you'll find that many scientists believe the universe is eternal, with cyclical and noncyclical varieties.

But even if we grant everything about the Kalam Cosmological Argument, it still doesn't prove or increase the likelihood of the existence of God. It only concludes that there is a cause, and says nothing about the nature of that cause. Craig has become something of an online celebrity debating all the extra stuff he personally adds to the original argument, namely that the cause must be a timeless, spaceless mind, which he then declares to be God, most probably. Here's one of his better performances, debating Sean Carroll on whether recent cosmological insights make it more rational to believe that there's a God, as well as one of the better rebuttals to his arguments:

I'm with Sean Carroll in this debate, needless to say :-) Two of his strongest arguments: 1) cause and effect are observed within our space-time, and it does not automatically follow that this rule applies to the beginning of space-time itself, and 2) theology doesn't offer anything in way of explaining what we observe in and about the cosmos, because it's not a very well defined field of study. The latter point also begins to explain how the Bible, just as any other poetic narrative, can be interpreted in countless ways, whereas scientific explanations are much more rigid (and therefore boring), with (usually) only one possible interpretation. In the end, however, it comes down to what we choose to believe and, in my opinion, science searches for reasons to believe things, whereas faith is asking us to take a leap and believe things without reason.

Life is a mystery, and ultimately it comes down to which attempts to solve this mystery one chooses to give credence to; that'll determine which side of this everlasting debate you position yourself on. But the debate itself remains super interesting and thought-provoking. So thanks for this little gem :-) And even though this response is quite long, there's so much more to say on this subject, although I admit I've already wandered quite a distance outside the contents of the article by incorporating some of your responses and my own compulsions. Thanks for sparking a lovely discussion and let me close by saying that I respect your, and anyone else's, faith; we all have faith and at some point, we all have to take that leap, it's just that I believe that science minimizes the size of that leap.

Thanks again for yet another wonderful stream of thought!