“I mean, pointing out the Tree and saying ‘Don’t Touch’ in big letters. Not very subtle, is it? I mean, why not put it on top of a high mountain or a long way off? Makes you wonder what He’s really planning.” 

Crowley points out a basic fallacy in God’s attitude with respect to Original Sin and Adam and Eve’s banishment from the Garden of Eden. It’s a question that theologians have struggled to answer, and atheists have used as evidence of religion’s absurdity. It seems a cruel paradox that the Almighty, benevolent and all wise, would instill humanity with a natural curiosity and then tempt them with knowledge to see if they would choose ignorance.

“But Crowley remembered what Heaven was like, and it had quite a few things in common with Hell.” 

One of the novel’s running themes is the fine line between good and evil. Crowley, once a denizen of Heaven, is well positioned to make the comparison: “You couldn’t get a decent drink in either of them, for a start” (23). The meaning is clear: strict lines between the two are arbitrary, and the moral canyon is often much narrower than purists would have us believe.

“Oh, he did his best to make their short lives miserable, because that was his job, but nothing he could think up was half as bad as the stuff they thought up themselves.” 

Pratchett and Gaiman take a dim view of humanity. Humans need minimal demonic interference to make Earth a hellscape. War, greed, environmental destruction, and bigotry are all manmade evils. The authors toy with the basic theological question: Is humanity inherently good or evil? Since both Crowley and