plindboe said:
If he didn't want Adam and Eve to eat from it, why did he create it in the first place? Why was it placed in the middle of the garden? And why was it beautiful when it apparently meant death to even touch it? Why did he grant it the powers to give knowledge about good and evil, if he didn't want Adam and Eve to have that knowledge? Why did he even care if Adam and Eve had that knowledge in the first place?
Oops, sorry for all those questions. I initially just wanted to just ask one, but more and more questions kept popping up.
Adam and Eve were created with reasoning abilities in order to qualify to be called God's children since God himself reasons and has all the qualities man has to a superlative degree.
So there was nothing in his human nature that needed anything extra . That included the so-called tree of good and evil.
Man was already aware of what was evil.
He knew that going contrary to God's will was wrong.
He knew that he owed his existence to his heavenly father who had placed him in pleasant conditions and provided him with sustenance and the promise of eterenal life.
God also had assigned Adam the job of tending to the Garden and its animals. He and his descendants were to expand it until it became global.
Adam was given the honor of the naming each animal. So Adam was no grunting inarticulate beast. He was created with the abilities of language and of imagination to use that language creatively. So Adam knew that to refuse to tend to the Garden and its animals was evil.
After eve was created, he knew that to mistreat her was evil because she was given him as a helper and it was his responsibility to teach and protect his younger physically weaker companion. Anything contrary to this he knew would be wrong or evil.
In short, Adam definitely did not suffer from some inherent moral or intellectual inability to differentiate evil from good. Adam knew that living was good as opposed to not existing. After all, he had once not existed and knew thast living is preferable. So choosing not to exist or causing himself or Eve not to exist via the wrong choice he knew was evil.
Since Adam and Eve already view what is evil, the tree of knowledge of good and evil could not have been one that granted Adam moral sensibilities since he possessed these already.
The tree then had to have a symbolic meaning. as eating from its fruit must also have.
The meaning becomes clear when an angelic son of God tempts Eve to eat.
This spirit creature using a serpent as a puppet proceeded to tell Eve in a roundabout way what the eating from the tree signified and called God a liar.
God, remember, was the one who determined good and evil, Such a privilege was not granted man. So Satan accused God of being selfish--of not wanting to share that right with others. In short, eating from the fruit in clear violation of the commandment would mean rejecting that arrangement where God is the lawgiver and man the law keeper.
Eating from it, Satan said, would make man like God knowing by himself what is good and evil and not having to be told. In that way man could aspire to be like God in stipulating morality.
In short, disobeying God and eating would be a deceision to go it alone as well as a request for God to out of the picture and let man try to govern himself.
It was also an accusation against God in reference to his right to rule the universe inthe way he did--as a moral LAW GIVER.
BTW
The tree became attractive in appearance to Eve only after Satan described it is false terms of granting things that God wanted only for himself. Then the tree became desirable to look at. Prior to that it had provably been avoided due to the restrictions in reference to it.
