Nowhere in this tale is the serpent associated with Satan. The God of this tale is the tyrannical, unforgiving, God of the Old Testament.

God created the Angels, and the greatest among them, Lucifer, as servants. But he made them too smart, too much like him, with the result that a third of them, led by the best of them, decided they weren't going to be bossed around any more. They weren't fired, they quit to start their own business.

So when God created the Earth, he decided that the slaves he would create to tend it for him would be too weak to challenge him and too stupid to realise they were slaves. Putting a Tree of Knowledge where they could reach it, and forbidding them to use it, was just the kind of joke any sadisitic deity plays on his creations.

The serpent, who in most religions is the embodiment of wisdom, realised what was going on. He also realised that Eve was a bit smarter than Adam, so it was she he confided in in order to set humans free from slavery.

After humans escaped from Eden, God tried to wipe them out, but Lucifer showed Noah how to save some of them. After that, God presented himself to different cultures as different gods on the principle of 'divide and rule'. This got so bad that in the end, Lucifer had to send Jesus, Krishna and Buddha to preach philosophies of love, forgiverness and unity to prevent us from killing each other off. God responded by sending Paul and Mohammed to make sure the fighting continued.