I made this post in rise's thread and it got no love so i was wondering if someone could tell me where im off especially on the second part.


1. Good is moving towards God and evil is moving away form God.

2. The tree of knowledge of good and evil gave us the ability to know good and evil.

3. God didn't want us to eat from the tree of knowledge.


Conclusion.

4. God didn't want us to be able to know if we are moving towards or away form him.

5. God didn't want us to have morals since morals are moving towards or away from God.

#2 - This is my understanding. Adam and Eve knew what was good, everything in the garden was good. Much like we will know what is good in heaven, but might not know evil. The tree's main affect was them knowing evil, especially having committed the evil of turning from God.

However, in another sense, Adam and Eve DID know evil already. God told them not to eat or touch the fruit, to disobey God was evil and they knew that. Yet they turned from this due to pride and the devil's influence.

They didn't have shame or fear then, but certainly had a very basic understanding of 'Things of God are good, Things not of God are evil'.


tl;dr:
God gave them a free choice, to obey or not obey, and they knew which was right and which was wrong.

So the tree of knowledge of good and evil to you is just a higher level of knowledge? Ok. That's not bad i guess.

I think it still leads to the problem of us not fully understanding what moving away form God meant. And not fully understating morality. And God not wanting us to know these things.

I think a question would be about differing degrees of free will - why didn't God let us choose to rape/murder right away, why try to hide this knowledge from us?

Turning away from God in any way is equally bad - a mortal sin of murder is the same as the mortal sin of lust, is the same as the mortal sin of disobeying God and eating the fruit. By only giving us the knowledge of even one of these things, he has given us free will.

New thought, I think He might have mercifully limited the possibility of us sinning against him by making it about only one thing.

This is all fine except for a few things.

One they shouldn't have named it the tree of knowledge of good and evil if we already had knowledge of good and evil. It should of been like the enhanced tree of knowledge.

Another is if we only had a limited knowledge of good and evil then im not sure we would be fully human or have the same level of consciousness. It would be more like we were a dog who could obey or disobey but not fully understand the ramification of the acts.

And the last one is your basically saying God only wanted us to have knowledge of one thing when it comes to good and evil. And i think thats kind of a problem. Im not sure where the problem is but it feels like one.

ty for your answers though Mr.Jerok

I ask myself, do I know God? And I do.

And I ask myself would I want to know God any other way? And I don’t.

So then I ask myself, did God really not want me to know good and evil?

Well thats what it appears to look like when you read Genesis. If Adam followed Gods wishes you would not know God in the way you do or know good and evil in the way you do.