It might or might not matter. In the same way it matters if gravity is the warping of spacetime or created by gravitons - in the end the models only help us understand how it functions, but it has little significance in actually being “correct” in a literal way.
To me, that is not mattering. As you note, metaphysical models need do no more than connect observations to accurate predictions. Here's an excerpt from an earlier post that explains what I mean:
One of the conclusions I was able to reach is that it doesn't matter what lies beyond experience, just that one be able to anticipate it. That is, if I stick my finger into a flame, I can reliably expect to feel the pain of fire. We assume that the finger and the flame exist as we perceive them, as if we were looking through a window when we look out on the world.
But suppose you somehow could know for an iron-clad fact that you were only a disembodied mind living an illusion. All these years, whenever you stuck what you thought was your finger into what looked like a flame, you felt the pain of fire. Now you know that that was an illusion - there is no fire or finger, just the illusion of same - so, you do what you used to do as a test, and it burns anyway as it always did before.
The answers to these metaphysical questions aren't really useful after all. You were on the way to the kitchen to make a margarita when you discovered this new reality. What do you do differently now that you have that knowledge? Nothing, once done freaking out because you don't have a body. So what do you do differently with this new knowledge? Nothing, once done freaking out because you don't have a body, and that's the point. But then you remember - you never did have a body. This is not new. The rules don't change. Let's see - what was I doing? Oh yes, getting ready to mix a margarita. It's just as enjoyable knowing it's an illusion. Have two. The tequila is low, but you know where to get more.
Foreknowledge is not the cause.
Nor was it claimed to be. We have foreknowledge of the next solar eclipse, but no claim is made that that knowledge will cause it.
The purpose of God gives us our ability of change. Abdul'baha gave this thought at a table talk of Freewill and its Limits.
I'm sure you realize that that source has no meaning or value to an unbeliever. It's odd that you keep posting such things to unbelievers. I'm sure that you're not surprised that I didn't look at either link. Why would I? In the hope that it might contain something useful? Baha'i scriptures never have in the past.
The garden story is a metaphor of free will, it is not a literal story.
You don't know what it was written for, and there are better answers than that. It's a cautionary tale, a warning. Man doesn't need a metaphor for free will, nor did the story contain one, metaphors being symbols, like "the apple of his eye." That story contained literal free will. And it is reasonable and likely to assume that myths like that one were originally meant and understood as history.
Contrast that with Aesop's' fables, which were presented as fictions, or even biblical parables, which are also presented as not having actually occurred. That's not the case with biblical myths. The Tower of Babbel was a literal tower. The global flood was a literal global flood.
I'd say that the most likely reason it was written was to explain why man finds himself living a short, difficult life rather than in a paradise by people who believed that the was a God who could have done that for them. As usual, the answer given is to blame the victim - man is being punished for being human, just as with the tower and flood myths just named. And the Sodom story, which may have a historical origin as a devastating meteor impact, which happened why? To punish man again.
Fire and brimstone: Sodom and Gomorrah perhaps destroyed by 'cosmic fireball,' evidence shows - Study Finds
Another possibility for why the myth was written was to frighten people into submission to the priests, in which case it can be understood as a warning against exercising free will.
Or perhaps some combination of the two.
One more point. One of these four myths is different from the others, because it explains nothing - the flood myth. The Garden myth explains why we're not in paradise despite a tri-omni God, the tower myth explains why different languages exist despite a tri-omni God (obviously, the earth would do better with just one), and the Sodom myth likely explains why a devastating astronomical event occurred despite a tri-omni God.
What aspect of ancient Hebrew life does a global flood, which is also explained as a ham-handed punishment of man, explain or account for? The myth depicts the deity in the most unflattering of ways. It blames man for its own shortcomings as a creator, kills virtually all terrestrial life cruelly, and then corrects the problem using the same breeding stock, which is soon rolling on the floor drunk and naked. Why is that story included? I have a hypothesis for that as well - marine fossils and sea shells found on the highest mountain tops. Think about it. Explain that without an understanding of sea floor rising. Since the land doesn't rise (it actually does, but they couldn't know or even imagine it), it must all have been under water at some time, and we know what that means - God was punishing man for being human again. How else could that happen?
