The god that is depicted in the opening chapter of Genesis has human senses. He sees and speaks. He can sense that things are "good". "He" is also assigned a male gender. But then God says "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness." The use of the plural "us" and "our" is not consistent with rest of the story of creation. It implies multiple deities who make multiple people, males and females. It also implies that the deities have the form of humans. The way that God orders the creation is logical, like the way a person would plan a project. This story creates an image of God a an all-powerful person.
The second story of creation gives a less detailed account of the creation of the earth and a more detailed account of the creation of man. However, there are direct conflicts between the two stories. In the first creation myth, men and women are created at the same time, but in the second myth one woman is created from the rib of one man. Also, in the second myth God lets Adam name all of the plants and animals, but in the first myth God names them. In the Eden story, God makes woman to be man's helper, that is not the case in the first story. The two stories, when read together, feel like two different accounts of the same story. This could be a result of the bible as an oral tradition, where the story changed as it was retold and then both versions were recorded. For me, the best way to look at these two stories is as two versions of the same thing.
Adam and Eve's punishment and expulsion from the Garden of Eden is a metaphor and explanation for the human experience. Before the text of the bible was written down, women felt pain during childbirth and men had to work for their food. The story of Adam and Eve is a way of justifying the various types of pain that are part of being human. The interesting part of the the story is why God punished Adam and Eve. He punished them because they went seeking knowledge that only God should have. This seems almost like a metaphor for growing up. When children are young, their parents care for them and try to spare them from pain and suffering. One way that they shelter their children is by withholding knowledge of the pains that come with life. But, when they grow up and seek adult knowledge pain and responsibility comes with it. Specifically, children don't bare children and, under good circumstances, they don't have to carry the full responsibility of feeding themselves. This is the same as God sheltering Adam and Eve from the knowledge of good an evil until they went and found it themselves. Then they had to "grow up" and learn to fend for themselves.
