Whatever your beliefs, I respect them. I don't debate the subject of God, but am always curious to hear what others believe. This is a purely theoretical/scholarly analysis, per an interesting assignment I had for one of my classes. --AS
The Judeo-Christian-Muslim God is of a wholly different nature than the pagan Gods. Though still almighty, this God (if he does exist) is distant and utterly a-hominid. At the risk of heresy, my interest is in analyzing this God as any other rational actor. It is, after all, the teachings of the Church after the twelfth century that reason is man's gift from God and leads his action in accordance with divine will.
So, if we are to assume then that this God is just such a rational actor (albeit perhaps a mythic one), what interest might He have had in forbidding men from the Tree of Knowledge and later in impeding their communication when they united and endeavored to build a great tower to soar above a great city?
Perhaps Genesis 11:6-7 provides us with an indication:
"Behold, they are one people, and they all have one langauge; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; and nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Comes, let us go down, and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another's speech." (Gen. 11:6-7)This begs the question to me: while men are often said to be “God-fearing,” to what extent is God is actually “man-fearing?”
The pagan God's of Greece and Rome did not need men beyond their own opulent desires to receive their bountiful praise, but ultimately, without men, they still had each other's company and a society to call their own atop Olympus or in the Pantheon.
But the monotheistic God has no such option.
Could it perhaps be interpreted then that God necessarily created men to assuage his own loneliness, only to find that men, molded in his image and intended to rely on his power, had both the tools and the desire to become his functional equal and thus destroy his power?
Book Two of Genesis certainly suggests that companionship was a concern to God when he made woman out of man. Why should we assume that God was not similarly concerned with creating a companion of his own?
Such an immortal God, alone in the universe and concerned with companionship, thus needs man more than man needs God. He fears man's abandonment of him, but mustn't let him know.
So God constructs his reverence by punishing man's "disobedience" and artificially generating his power from the limitation of man's knowledge. Science is the dagger in his side and he must do all that he can, for as long as he can, to resist it--as at Babel. His doctrine preaches subordinance, blind faith and abstinence from discovery.
His true-believers, men of faith and clergymen, carry out his word on Earth. Institutions are built, rules are followed, and man's curiousity is channeled into an intricate and expanding religion. A whole spectrum of knowledge, all the while, is shrouded.
Power-knowledge prevails and man fears God, wholly unaware of his foolishness.
God should not pity man's mortality (and indeed he does not), but man should pity God's eternal solittude. He should not fear his wrath, but acknowledge him as a friend, knowing that there is nothing either can do to affect the fundamental problem of the other.
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Perhaps an overly simplistic answer to your post is that God did not fear those in the Garden or who built the Tower of Babel, but instead was disobeyed despite His love for them. God gave Adam and Eve absolute paradise in Eden, on the single condition that they retain their innocence and resist the temptation to eat from The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (you left out the end part on the tree by the way...). Instead of obeying God and living out the life of pure bliss that God offered to them, Adam and Eve fell to the temptation of Satan and made the conscious choice to disobey God.
Also notice that Adam was with Eve when Satan tempted her to eat the fruit. Gen. 2:6 states that Eve gave the fruit "also unto her husband with her," meaning that Adam is just as much at fault here since he did not protect his wife during this temptation and watched her eat the fruit before doing so himself. Thus, it is a common misconception that Eve is totally to blame for the fall, especially since Adam pretty much goes on to point fingers at Eve when God asks him about what had happened.
But I digress. The point is, it was not that God wanted people to be miserable in a lack of intellect. Sure, He wanted to have more knowledge than Adam and Eve, but it was out of eternal love and a desire to keep them from having knowledge of evil. When they broke His trust, they were no longer able to have the perfect life He wanted for mankind, and hence the fall.
The Tower of Babel is a little more...interesting. I do not really have any particular theological knowledge on the subject, but I guess I will give you my best shot at an interpretation. Gen. 11:4 gives the best insight to the situation: "And they said, Go to, let us build a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name..." In other words, the people who built the tower did so to reach heaven and to make a name for themselves. The men did not seek to glorify God (by using their labor towards being productive and going good for others), and the gifts He had given them, but instead were glorifying mankind without recognizing God.
From God's point of view, He had given the people their talents and free will to choose what to do with them. Instead of choosing to use their abilities to do good in the world, mankind was acting out of pride and self-interest, which directly contradicts God's purpose for mankind. His solution to the problem was to scatter the people and to make it difficult to work together...which I consider to be a non-violent and creative way of going about it!
So, generally, I do not think God was man-fearing. He loved his creation and did not want those who were in His image to know of evil or to live simply in pride, and that is why He did what He did in these two cases. I hope this makes sense (and is theologically sound!).
As for your second part about God being lonely and in need of companionship, I don't really think that is the case. When we personify God as much as we do, we see him as a single entity, an old bearded man for some, who is alone in Heaven (wherever that is). But that personification is just a way we try to explain God, as a Father and a Son for many, while the true nature of His infinite existence is ultimately a mystery for mankind. We can try to understand who He is through analogy, what we see in creation, and so on, but trying to limit what He is to an entity that can experience loneliness does not normally fit.
The big three monotheistic religions, as far as I know, teach that God is immutable. Logically, this must be so if He is to be infinite and unbound by space and time. Mutability, which would include changes in mood like loneliness, necessitates a chronological sequence for such changes to occur. Since God is eternal and exists outside of the constraints of time, He is not mutable and thus cannot experience a change from loneliness to a sense of companionship, or vice versa.
Again, I hope this makes some sense. It is with great humility that I submit this response.
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