Ellis has lots of questions, all of which can be answered in the first two:
Why put man into a position where you know he’s going to disobey without understanding that it is evil until after he has disobeyed? Why punish the descendants of that man for his crime instead of allowing each to choose? Why the 10 arbitrary rules? Why not 20? How does breaking off a piece of yourself and having it killed horribly somehow allow forgiveness of those made-up sins? No judge in the world would allow one person to take the death sentence for another’s crime. How is that justice? How does it make sense to condemn tens of millions of people to eternal torment simply because they had never heard of you? Why did he even bother in the first place? To amuse himself?
Is there something I’m missing?
Starting with the last question first, yes. And then, yes. That’s all you need to know in order to begin thinking rationally about the situation. I recommend kicking this around with pretty much any game designer, or even a significantly experienced gamer, for a perspective that will render all of the obvious answers to these questions perfectly comprehensible if not necessarily credible. Once you understand that you’re in the position of one of the little orcs in Warcraft trying to understand not only the purpose of the player, but the Blizzard designer, you will cease being so confused about the universe in which you presently find yourself.
That little orc can no more begin to understand the ambition of the Blizzard designer to buy a nice sports car in order to impress a certain girl and how that factors into the designer’s motivate to create the little orc than you can imagine the purpose for your creation. Amusement almost surely factors in – we are created in His image, after all – but is unlikely to be the sole motivation. Remember, it was only the Earth that was formless and void; a Christian multiverse concept presents possibilities that are far more interesting to contemplate than those provided by a mere defensive mathematical bulwark against the anthropic principle.