"One cannot believe how long you can stretch fictions. Even if Adam and Eve disobeyed God, I don't see any relationship with you or with me. And secondly, disobedience is not necessarily a sin. Sometimes it may be the most virtuous thing to do.

"But all cultures, all societies, want obedience. That is another name of slavery, spiritual imprisonment. What wrong had Adam and Eve done because they had eaten the fruit of knowledge? Is wisdom a sin? Is ignorance a virtue? And God had forbidden them to eat from two trees; one was of wisdom and the other was of eternal life. Who is committing the sin, Adam and Eve, or God? Neither is wisdom wrong, nor is the longing for eternal life wrong; they are absolutely natural. The prohibition is wrong, and their disobedience is absolutely right. They were the first revolutionaries of the world, the first human beings with some dignity.

"It is because of their disobedience that all civilization, science, art, everything else has become possible. If they had not disobeyed, we would have been still naked in the Garden of Eden chewing grass – even chewing gum would not have been possible.

"It is not only Christianity; other religions find other reasons to condemn life. Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism all say you are suffering, you are miserable, and you cannot get out of it because it is a punishment for your evil acts of the past life. Now, what has been done in the past life cannot be undone; you have to suffer it. This misery, this suffering, this anguish has been created by yourself, and all that you can do is patiently suffer so that in the future life you are rewarded. A strange argument!

"If you do something wrong in this life, you should be punished in this life. In fact, cause and effect are always together. You just put your hand into fire – do you think you will be burnt in your coming life? You will be burnt here-now. Every act either has its own reward or has its own punishment. This distance of lives is a cunning idea to make you accept life at the minimum, and all these religions teach you to renounce life."