They didn't need to know anything but good because God was never going to let an evil experience enter their lives. They did not have to discern the difference if evil was never present. God placed that decision in his own jurisdiction. With the introduction of evil, all these thousands of years hence and humans still can't tell the difference. The world would not be in this mess if everyone just decided to do good to their neighbor...."the Golden Rule"...remember? That is the world we lost. Do you like this one better?
So you’re confirming what I said about their lack of knowledge of the difference between good and evil. Which brings me again to the question of how God could expect them to know the difference between good and evil without ever having taught it to them! How would they know that disobeying God was “bad” when they had never experienced bad in order to know what it is??
Speak for yourself. Many people can tell the difference between good/right and bad/evil actions.
They were not children but perfect human specimens with intellectual capacity far exceeding that of present day members of our species.
This is a bald assertion, but whatever.
What you have described are child-like beings who don’t know the difference between right and wrong, because their parent never taught it to them. Hence the reason my example was about an infant; because most children older than that have begun to be taught about the difference between right and wrong by their (responsible) parents.
What they did was willfully and deliberately disobey their Creator when the penalty had already been stated.....it wasn't a mistake, but a carefully considered action in full knowledge of what it meant....it was a seed of doubt about the Creator's motives that got the woman to thinking that God was withholding something from them that was of benefit....as if somehow there were sinister motives in that small test. She was concentrating on self interest, believing that life might be even better if she ate the forbidden fruit and was able to "be like God, knowing good and evil" for herself. The devil even told her that she would not die....taking away the penalty in her mind.
Again, how would they have any idea that “willfully and deliberately disobeying their Creator” was a “bad” thing if they had never experienced bad things and were only aware of good things!? And how on earth did they do this with “full knowledge of what it meant” when they did not, in fact, have full knowledge of what it meant as they had never been taught the difference between right actions and wrong actions?! You have yet to answer to this.
And “the woman” was right because (in the story) God WAS withholding important knowledge that could have been beneficial to her and Adam. That being the knowledge of the difference between good and evil. Had they had such knowledge, perhaps they wouldn’t have eaten fruit they were told not to eat.
The man was suckered into a 'divide and conquer' scenario that he did not resist. His loyalties were tested as he could have chosen to obey God, and a whole different outcome would have transpired. Most people have never really understood what that defection meant for the entire human race and even the planet itself.
Greed and selfishness have been exercised to the max ever since, creating no real good for anyone. The lesson is not lost on those who see its value.
Until someone can demonstrate that this is indeed the case, I’m going to have to lump it into all other unverified claims I’ve heard being made in other religions.
To me, it’s just a story with a terrible moral lesson. It’s basically just telling us to do what we’re told without question. That is not morality, that is mere obedience to authority, which as history shows, has some potentially very dangerous consequences.
There was no world outside of the garden until they created it with their children. Their environment changed dramatically from the delicious fruit in abundance in Eden, to the eking out of existence on cursed ground, tilling infertile soil to make bread for themselves. They would experience first hand, painfully and immediately, what it meant to throw away what they had, in favor of something unknown...told to them by a pathological liar.....it was a gamble that did not pay off, for them or their children. But he never left them without his instruction or failed to supply what they needed to live. This would be the greatest life lesson in history.
So again this reinforces my point that they had absolutely no experience in determining between what is good/right versus what is bad/wrong.
The result is the world we live in....and God has been trying all this time to make people see the outcome of denying him and failing to follow his rules. They reaped what they had sown, and it affected all their children.
So all of God’s children forever and ever (until Jesus returns) are doomed to suffer because two people who weren’t equipped with the ability to determine the difference between a right/good action and a wrong/bad action in the first place, made a bad decision.
How does this not reinforce my point that your God is a terrible parent?
But the lesson has a time frame and an outcome that is already foretold.....you are free to believe it or not.
I have a hard time believing things that don’t make sense and are also completely lacking in evidence.
Its a lesson in obedience.
Right. Which is not a lesson in morality at all. Another failing on your God’s abilities as a parent.
How do you teach your children not to steal, not to cause harm to anyone, not to drive dangerously, not to use drugs or abuse alcohol....?
I ask them to empathize and imagine how they’d feel if someone stole something from them, or drove dangerously and hurt someone they loved or abused drugs and overdosed. I explain why certain actions are right and wrong, based on the consequences those actions would produce upon him/herself and upon others in their surrounding world.
What I
don’t do is to tell them to just do what they’re told, without providing some explanation as to why they are being told to do it, because they won’t learn anything that way.
But when they reach an age where they think they know better than you do, they leave home to live their own life and make their own decisions. It's not the parent's fault if they choose to live a life that is contrary to their upbringing. You can't force your 'adult' children to conform to your wishes....all you can do is warn them of the consequences of their own actions and hope that you have taught them well. They have a right to free will....don't they? It doesn't mean that they make the right decisions, does it? How many parents wonder what they did wrong?
It's the parent’s fault if they never bothered to teach their children how to distinguish right actions from wrong actions.
In my scenario, my kids will be equipped with the knowledge they need to determine right from wrong while Adam and Eve were not equipped with such knowledge and therefore were unable to make truly informed moral decisions. I don’t just send them off into the world telling them to do what they’re told, as God did in the story. That’s how you raise naïve adults who can’t think for themselves and are more likely to be taken in by people looking to take advantage of their ignorance.
But God did teach his son all that was necessary for him to become the family head and to exercise his wisdom and authority over his charges. The woman knew that eating the fruit would result in death.....but she was persuaded to take the risk by believing a liar. We have the same choice....believe God or believe the liar with a plausible, alternate explanation....
Perhaps she believed a liar because she wasn’t equipped with the skills to be able to discern liars (wrong) from truth tellers (right). She wouldn’t even have been aware that there were liars in existence in the first place!
It wasn't a case of couldn't be bothered....it was a case of never intending evil to ever be in human experience. To invite evil would be the work of a fool when death was the penalty.....fools fell for the lies about God.....they are still falling for them.
Oh so it was a case of willful negligence then. Another character trait of a terrible parent.
They knew the penalty before they ate the fruit. Only a stupid person gambles with their own life.....and if a woman is pregnant, she risks the life of her child is she engages in reckless behavior......
They couldn’t possibly have fully understood the penalty of their actions given that they weren’t aware what a wrong/bad/evil action was in the first place. And they certainly didn’t know how to discern it from a right/good action.
because genetic imperfection entered the genome before they brought forth children, all their offspring inherited the same genetic flaw that resulted from their failure to obey their rightful Sovereign.....a fight to do the right thing is called "sin" because evil and sin work hand in glove. Evil actions are caused by evil minds. This world is the product of knowing and carrying out evil.
This needs to be demonstrated, rather than asserted.
Now tell me if the human race learns anything from the actions of others in the past.
Sure. For example, blindly following orders from authority figures without question or thought to consequences, results in groups like Nazis convincing people to exterminate entire populations of people. That was literally their excuse at the Nuremburg Trials.
