It's just... so different from how he has been around every other group. It's like he is TRYING to get a hostile reaction.
And he is totally in the wrong here. Heaven did nothing to him but he stole from them. They are being nice about it!
Orange Light. I think the default is having to justify, why you
shouldn't just take what you want, not why you could. Because, looking at his actions, I don't think Paul actually thinks that stealing
is morally wrong by default, outside of context, like:
a) Stealing from someone he likes.
b) Stealing that would actually, genuinely harm the one stolen from (as in, more than just any property rights they might have), who he already doesn't want harmed.
c) Stealing that would break the social contract with a society (mark him with the social/legal status of a "thief" in that society), that he expects he could want to (continue to) have amiable relations with in the future. Which describes most societies he interacts with.
Paul doesn't like the Silver City. He knows of no way how stealing the fruit would actually hurt the angels, other than their pride. And he doesn't actually expect to ever have relations with the Silver City that would benefit him.
If you want to criticise that within the same moral framework, you could point out how:
1) Paul might not be entirely rational in his dismissal of potential future benefits of not burning bridges with the Silver City, thanks to the antipathy born out of the whole "an atheist finds out, that the God's morality debates and the problem of evil are not suddenly just hypothetical thought exercises" thing. I'm not saying there actually is, but would Paul be that quick to dismiss the possibility, had he not been an atheist from an Abrahamic faith culture?
2) Even if the moral responsibility of grossly overreacting and going full Sodom and Gomorrah would have been entirely on the angels, at least some responsibility rests on the one who provoked such a reaction, if they were aware of the possible consequences and yet did it anyway, without a sufficiently justified reason. Did Paul do a good enough risk-benefit analysis before acting? Was it right to maybe risk the lives of a lot of people for Blaze's benefit?
3) Not everybody confines the status of "thief" to the limits of the specific society's that the act of "theft" took place (even though things like "property" can be very subjective - see "intellectual property", for example). To a lot of people, the act of "stealing" is seen as a universal crime and will lower Paul's social standing and trustworthiness accordingly, in their eyes. Even if they themselves, or the societies they protect, are not actually in any danger of being stolen from by Paul.
