How could Adam and Eve be expected to know about the goodness of following God’s will, and the evil of defying it, before they ate of the tree of knowledge? If the apple of the tree of knowledge granted Adam and Eve the knowledge of good and evil, then before they ate this apple they could have had no knowledge of good or evil - thus no knowledge that it is good to follow God’s will and evil to defy it.
So how can God punish Adam and Eve for not knowing about good and evil, before they could have known about good and evil?
Now, I’m admittedly not the brightest crayon in the ILP box, but I think your answer lies in the fact that God pointedly told them not to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Perhaps they couldn’t differentiate between good and evil, but he did say “Don’t eat this fruit.”
Exactly - God’s prohibition awakened their awareness of possibility, the possibility of being able, of being able to disobey God’s will if they so choose, and this possibility gave birth to anxiety - “anxiety is the dizziness of freedom”
They were tempted. Tempted by whom? Not by God, but by themselves.
The serpent who spoke to/tempted Adam was Adam speaking to/tempting himself.
The point is that there is no means for them to know that it is wrong to disobey God, because thus far, before eating the apple, they have no knowledge of good and evil.
How can they know it is evil or wrong to disobey God’s orders to them, if they have no knowledge of good and evil?
How can they be judged by God for giving in to temptation when they have no way of knowing that it is wrong to give in to temptation?
Two, to me it seems they wouldn’t need knowledge of good/evil, male/female, life/death in order to disobey a commandment. That is to say, they didn’t need to know what the consequences would be of disobedience in order to follow through with it.
They discovered all this after the fact, as a consequence.
They didn’t need to know it was wrong per se, or why it was so, or why God forbade them the fruit of this one tree. They only needed to know it was forbidden.
No, the point is that eating of the tree of knowledge gave them the knowledge of good and evil, morality. Calling it “bad” or “evil” or “wrong” is all the same thing, morality, moral judgment. Adam and Eve could have had no knowledge of morality, at all, before they ate of the fruit. So there is no reason that they could have known it was wrong to disobey God.
Yes, and the point is that they had no way to know, before they acted, what these consequences would be. So how is it just or fair to judge them for their actions, if they could not have had any prior knowledge of the consequences of the act?
No, they do need to know about morality to understand that something is forbidden, because forbidden by whom? God commands them to do or not do something, and in order to even understand this command a concept of morality is necessary. What other basis would they have for choosing to obey God if they have no concept of morality?
The lack of desire or will perhaps to rebel against a father figure.
How do we know that god commanding adam and eve not to eat of the fruit of this forbidden tree was not a test in reverse? How do we know that god did not, in fact, want them to rebel and eat this fruit?
For what possible reason would the tree of knowledge be put there if not so that they could reach out to it, to take a bite out of it, to experience it, to experience themselves for the first time as separate. This is what we do everyday, so often in our lives. We see something good to be reached for, to be strived for, but something holds us back - we feel we have no right to it, no right to enjoy and to live Life.
I think we could just as easily look at it from that angle - it wasn’t a temptation but something that was meant for them to strive for, a coming to consciousness and self-awareness, daring to strike out on their own against the greatest force there is - the divine. And perhaps that is what was needed to begin human personal evolution, the will and desire to think for themselves and to be autonomous.
Doesn’t any real parent at some point want their child to rebel against them, to defy them? Doesn’t that bring a smile to the parents’ faces to know that the child is not afraid of them and can have a mind of their own?
I think from the point of view of the O.T. scholars and writers, seeking to have more knowledge of god, or more knowledge than god was tantamount to blasphemy and the worse of all sins - the desire to be like god. But perhaps if there is the divine, this divine might actually want us to grow into just that - becoming like god or knowing the divine within.
Just because they didn’t know what it felt like to do wrong doesn’t mean they didn’t know it was wrong. Up to that point, everything God had told them to do they had done, and they had reaped all of the rewards of good “children.” When God told them not to eat the fruit, he told them why. They may not have had any concept of what the consequences would feel like, nothing to gauge it by, but they knew they shouldn’t do it. A logical mind, knowing that it’s been rewarded with a beautiful garden and a wonderful, free life by doing everything that was asked of it, should be able to piece together that not doing so would cause the opposite. The fact that Eve needed to be tempted at all to do it is proof that she knew she shouldn’t. If she had no concept of right/wrong, she would’ve done it on her own, but she had to be provoked by an outside influence.
Genesis 2:17 - But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
It is inconsistent to on the one hand claim that Adam and Eve “did something wrong” by violating God’s commandment, while on the other hand claiming that they have no knowedge of right or wrong. The “good and evil” of the tree of knowledge is the knowledge of morality. If previously they had just obeyed God because of habit or because they never questioned him, that is not morality, it is just instinct. But clearly their instincts were not sufficient to guarantee obedience to God. So God, knowing that A) their natural human instincts are not sufficient to guarantee their following his commandments, and B) knowing that they have no knowledge of good and evil, still punishes them for violating his commandment. It is inconsistent. How can God expect them to obey him if they have neither the knowledge of morality necessary to understand right and wrong, and neither the natural instinct to obey him? God ought to have known both of these things, as well as known that they would be tempted, so clearly God set them up to fail, which seems to be Arcturus’s point, which I agree with but which is also external to this topic question at hand.
The point here is that regardless of how God set them up to fail, which he did, there is no basis for condemning or punishing Adam and Eve when they disobeyed God, because they had neither the knowledge of morality nor the natural instinct which ought to have kept them obeying God’s commands.
Yes, but the concept of rebellion is not in itself something to be judged for, the fact here is that God punishes Adam and Eve for acting on this “rebellious instinct” despite that they have no basis for understanding why they should not have acted in this manner.
Well God punished them for it, cast them out of paradise. This is interpreted by Christians as punishment, that God punished them for violating his will. I agree with you that God set them up to fail, and that it makes far more sense to assume that God wanted them to fail his test, but modern Christian belief does not seem to hold this view.
I agree with you that this view makes far more sense. But what I am trying to do here is examine the Christian belief as it is held by Christians. Your point is a good one, but ultimately it does not relate to the modern Christian belief, because they do not have this view that God “wanted them to sin”, but rather they believe that God did not want them to sin, and yet they did it anyways.
Okay, laying aside, bracketing, my own intuitions/thoughts on this matter and on the divine, I’ll try to step into the shoes of the biblical writers, if I can even do that. Lol. But I do not think in these terms any more.
I have sometimes wondered why the writers would have intuited the divine having planted that beautiful tree in the garden and it was probably right smack in the middle of it – was it to tantalize them? Think about it – a tree that holds the knowledge of good and evil and has those luscious fruits dangling from it has to really have looked like something, don’t you think, and be really tempting?
But I suppose that the biblical writers were just painting a picture for the people of that time in order for them to come to awareness of the presence of the reality of good/evil and the dangers of even being tempted by the desire for that knowledge. After all, that kind of knowledge can turn the tide in one’s life. I might actually say too, when I really think about it, that the biblical writers were the first ethicists and moralists and that they were really quite brilliant and philosophical and aware of human nature - in pointing to the world/universe/god, even as they did for that time.
Yes, the tree can be seen as a test. Perhaps what the writers were trying to do was to show that the creator hoped against hope that adam and eve would listen, would trust in the love and the wisdom of their creator and be strong enough to overcome the temptation of their curiosity. There is always some kind of test being shown in the bible – adam and eve, the prophets (Abraham) etc… God’s people were always been tested.
I’m not sure that eating of that tree and its fruit was necessarily about immorality – as you have already pointed out, they had no sense of good nor evil before they ate the apple. In order for something to be sinful, there has to be knowledge. I suppose even the fact that their creator told them not to eat of the fruit of that tree or they shall surely die, until it happened they could not perhaps really know the consequences of their actions - only perhaps. But I think the tree maybe more represented God’s love in the minds of the writers and perhaps it represented some kind of equalizer within the garden of eden (delight). After all, they were given everything that they needed to be happy, as some of us humans are, yet still, they went after the one thing they were told they could not have.lol Quite wise of the writers to point that out, if that was one of their purposes.
Also, I think that adam’s and eve’s eventual refusal to trust in god’s word and love and succumbing to temptation, also speaks to laziness and inertia. Instead of thinking of what god said to them, examining it and the consequences of disobedience and rebelling against god, though I feel that adam at some point did make a feeble attempt not to succumb to the wiles of eve, they chose to give into their temptation and fail. The fact that they had never known sin and were completely innocents – does this excuse them from at least pondering god’s words - albeit, come to think of it now, the next question for me would be did god actually spell out to them what this death actually inferred and mean to them. Were they aware of the full extent of the consequences?
The writers then try to show that after having eaten of the fruit and disobeying God, God still shows his love. You asked why didn’t god just vanquish them, destroy them, but then if there is love, why would a god do this? We tend to love that which we create, don’t you think? If God truly so loved the world and adam and eve, this god would find another way, a more loving creative way to solve that problem. The garden of eden was closed down (god kept his word) but the writers wanted to show that there was compassion – though we do die – God still had compassion, adam and eve lived and flourished and multipled and presumably were happy, and eventually sent his Son to open the gates of heaven. Also, as can be seen from the writings, this god still* had a direct relationship with the people and walked with them he did not abandon them as many of them thought.
Yes, from my POV this is what I glean from it. But ….Just to touch on this a wee bit more here. As I said above, had god not taken the time to explain to adam and eve, to have a dialogue with them, about what the consequences of death were and meant, it might have been unfair of god. Men were the rulers, the powerful ones, the patriarchs at that time and I suppose that the mentality of the biblical writers would have filtered into their writings and interpretations of how they saw god and represented the world. Many parents today have this way of telling their children that they cannot do this or that and they do not take the time to explain why. The children ask why and the parents say because I said it. Not very reasonable is it, and it doesn’t offer the children much awareness. The more information we take in, the more light that can be shed on something, the better it is to make a more informed action, a better one.
As far as punishment goes, many humans, not just catholics/Christians/whoever seem to feel that when they do something stupid or lacking in awareness, something that they just did not take the time to consider what the consequences would be and things turn out badly, they consider themselves to be punished by god or that life is not treating them fairly, when really it is just a matter of certain effects flowing out because of certain actions. We call this punishment but it is not – one might call it cause and effect, one might call it one possible outcome of an action and who knows how much worst another possible outcome may have been. We just don’t see!
The thing to remember is that this god did in fact tell adam and eve not to eat of that tree or they shall die – that is just a consequence of their not trusting and not listening and their not talking things out together, or even continuing to question god, or forcing god to explain everything to them albeit as I said, had god not explained the facts to them, then it would not have been fair – but I could be wrong there. But I really got carried away here and I am finished.
Hmm. A good question. I wonder if it’s a ‘knowledge of’ vs. ‘knowledge that’ type of situation. I.E., before eating the fruit, they knew that they ought not disobey God, but they had no actual knowledge of what it was like to do an evil deed. It seems from the text that the primary and immediate reaction to eating the fruit was shame. Shame is the knowledge of what it’s like to feel bad because you have already done something wrong, not the knowledge of which things are right and which aren’t.
I don’t so much see shame as knowledge. Shame to me is a negative feeling and negative feelings can hold us back from experiencing that knowledge that is inner awareness. Much of the shame that one feels can be and often is based, not in reality, but in a negative sense of our selves, a bias based/built upon a judgment of our self or based/built on the biased judgment of others.
Take away the shame and then one might begin to flow into seeingwhat is real and self-awareness.
The only purpose, at least to me, that shame serves is just to muddy the lenses with which we see our selves, others, and the world.
Nothing you said had anything to do with my point past the word ‘shame’. I’m being serious here: if you’re using my posts as an opportunity to knowingly preach your views when they have nothing to do with the subject at hand, please stop. If you DID think what you wrote was related to my point, all I can do is try to explain my point a little more clearly, so you can see otherwise. So, here:
Whatever else shame might be, it is something that can only happen to you if you already have an idea of what’s right and wrong- it’s a feeling you get when you’ve done something wrong*.
The first reaction Adam and Eve had to eating the fruit was shame.
What this suggests to me is that they already had ‘knowledge of good and evil’ in the way TheLastMan described.
So what I’m putting forward, is that by eating the fruit, Adam and Eve learned what it’s like to do evil, not what good and evil are as naked concepts.
Or when society tells you you’ve done something wrong, or when you’ve judged yourself evil because you’re conditioned to see yourself through the eyes of an outside wankety-wank-wank-wank. Seriously, keep it to yourself.
(me feeling shame) – Okay, after re-reading my response to you, I am able to see your point. I am aware sometimes, after the fact, that I tend to respond from a different pov that has nothing to do with a post. I need to learn to bracket more. I was viewing shame psychologically speaking which response I still hold to be true.
At the same time, in the moment, I was NOT consciously aware of doing this – I was not preaching as you suggested, I was just stating my pov. That having been said……
Okay, from the Adam & Eve pov, I agree with the above. Adam and Eve were told by god not to eat of the fruit of the tree of good and evil so their so-called hanging their heads in shame was as a direct consequence of their disobeying god’s edict, their first coming to awareness of sin.
But let me qualify that somewhat…shame is a feeling you get when you think/feel you’ve done something wrong. Sometimes our shame is not based in reality but again we are talking about adam and eve here.
It’s actually sort of a conundrum if you think of it. Until they ate that so-called apple, whatever, they had no knowledge of good and evil, right or wrong - how could they? They were in the garden of eden where before that point there was nothing but happiness and harmony. So really, that made them the same as little children before they are old enough to reason and to have a conscience. So, from the way I look at it, as I’ve said, could they really be held responsible for their action before they took the fall, before they ate that apple?
But from another pov, there is another issue that is equally important or more so – and that is the issue of self-awareness or awareness of our actions and their short- or long-term consequences. Okay, here you may think that I am preaching but I am not, though I do realize that sometimes it is a fine line between stating our thoughts/paradigms and preaching. Anyway, I feel that the writers were trying to point this out to the people at the time. And also of course, from the point of view that there is something called good and evil in the world - or at least negative energy and unbalance.
Hmmm perhaps. Perhaps fear was their first reaction. They knew they had done something wrong and that they would soon be facing god…they felt naked – yes, nakedness suggests shame. It also suggests fear.
You seem to have this backwards unless you are deliberately trying to muddy the waters here. Perhaps you are not so much the snake as you would appear to be a puppeteer!! What the Last Man actually stated was:
How could Adam and Eve be expected to know about the goodness of following God’s will, and the evil of defying it, before they ate of the tree of knowledge? If the apple of the tree of knowledge granted Adam and Eve the knowledge of good and evil, then before they ate this apple they could have had no knowledge of good or evil - thus no knowledge that it is good to follow God’s will and evil to defy it.
So, what this suggests to me is that what The Last Man is ACTUALLY saying is that Adam and Eve did not have the knowledge before eating the apple. Re-read his words. And I agree with him that until they actually ate that apple, they did not. Afterwards, they become responsible for their actions. How could they have possibly known about the goodness of following god’s will as TLM stated - until they had something else to compare it to? How can we ever know something until/unless we know its opposite?
I agree with you. I think it was through their fear, their shame, their loss of peace and happiness in the garden, their awareness of god’s disappointment in them and through their banishment from the garden that they learned what good and evil actually tastes like. A thought or concept of something doesn’t give us the experience of that something. Adam and Eve not only attained knowledge of what good and evil is, but they experienced it. Experience is the best teacher.
Think about it – a tree that holds the knowledge of good and evil and has those luscious fruits dangling from it has to really have looked like something, don’t you think, and be really tempting?
(me feeling shame) 
– Okay, after re-reading my response to you, I am able to see your point. I am aware sometimes, 
but I am not, though I do realize that sometimes it is a fine line between stating our thoughts/paradigms and preaching. Anyway, I feel that the writers were trying to point this out to the people at the time. And also of course, from the point of view that there 
What the Last Man actually stated was: