Nimos, thank you for inspiring me to think:
I don't think it's worth going into a discussion of whether the word means evil or bad is best. And honestly, I don't think it matters, it might even be worse in fact.
If something is bad, it's the opposite of something that is good. To me, evil in this context that we are talking, covers all these words like "bad", "wrong" or whatever similar word can be assigned to the idea of evil etc.
Or said in another way, if God say something is wrong, it's not right and therefore not good.
the typical atheist argument, as I know it, is blaming God for putting up rules when A&E didn't have a clue about right&wrong, so that they couldn't reasonably have obeyed to rules to begin with.
This is why I say that they might have known right from wrong - before eating the fruit.
Co-poster
@Brian2 , in contrast, argues that they were inclined to do wrong... before eating the fruit and getting the knowledge of it. see
EVE! Legendary heroine of Humanity!
I respect his apologetics. But I personally tend to take another approach to the garden story.
For me, the issue of evil being understood in the sense of morally wrong is right at the center of the debate we're leading here.
If they can argue that A&E effectively had no idea of the wrongfulness of eating the fruit... why did put God this regulation up in the first place?
If, however, they can't show their point that A&E didn't know right from wrong, their accusations stay meaningless, as I see it.
This is why this point is so central to the understanding of the whole story, as I see it.
So now you say "evil" as used in the text... could have encompassed both the aspect of "bad" and the aspect of "morally wrong".
I suggest, we look at other occurences of the underlying Hebrew word in the Bible... to find out if you could be right:
[I must admit that I had to scroll down quite a bit to really find an occurence at which "evil" in the sense of morally wrong does not make any sense... but there it is:]
Genesis 41:3.
Evil cows. In this context, the cows couldn't possibly have been evil in the sense of morally wrong. They were just ugly. That's all.
So here it's really evil in the sense of bad, and the connotation of "morally wrong" could not have made any sense at the same time, too.
So, if atheists want to accuse God for putting man into a dilemma he couldn't solve... they need to go ahead and show that the knowledge of the tree wasn't just the distinction between good and bad. Bad like the
evil cows in Genesis 41:3.
Especially when he doesn't give them the ability to correctly make such choices based on what they believe is right and wrong.
see above
Yes that is correct, but then the responsibility when such being uses their free will to do things, falls on God.
according to you.
Let's say a cat have free will
no, I'd like to decline you offer to accept your assumtion. I don't want to say that a cat has the free will humans have concerning moral decisions.