Adam and Eve: Answer this question if you dare!

[Divinus Arma]

Background:
I am completely objective on religion. I claim no demonination but I believ in God. Why I believe in God is another topic. It's not faith, let's just say that. My question is not on whether Adam and Eve actually existed. Help me out here and stick to the question I pose, please? I'll bold the important stuff for you scanners. Read the rest, though for the full scoop.

Setting the stage:
The Christian Old testmanet, Jewish Torah says, essentially, that
a. Adam and Eve did not know the difference between Good and Evil. The Living Bible, Tyndale House Publishers, London England (1973), as one scripture example says: "Genesis 2:16,17"- You may eat any fruit in the garden except fruit from the Tree of Conscience [or tree of knowledge of good and evil, depending on which bible you read]- for its fruit will open your eyes to make you aware of right and wrong, good and bad. If you eat its fruit you will be doomed to die". The King James Version says "And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat, 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".

b. From this we can reasonably assert that, according to religious text, Adam and Eve did not know the difference between Good and Evil before eating the apple. Anyone disagree?

c. We can also say that Evil is the absence of Good. Evil is not the opposite of Good, because this assumes the two are finite and measurable. Evil is the absence of Good like darkness is the absence of light. Is there a source of darkness? Do you have an object that creates darkness? Of course not. So to with Evil. You cannot create evil. By murdering someone, you have not created evil; you have instead taken away a source of good:which would be to allow them life. Same thing as putting out a candle. Did I create dark, or create an absence of light? Dark and evil are just words we use to describe a lack of something that we would mistakenly label their opposite.

d. Under this logic, it is good to obey God and evil to disobey God. This is because fulfilling God's will is Good, and noncompliance is the absence of fullfillment.

The Question:

If Adam and Eve did not know the difference between Good and Evil, how would they know it was evil to disobey God and eat the apple?

[Duke of Gloucester]

I would question the itnterpretation of "knowledge of good and evil". My Bible (New Jerusalem Bible Standard Edition) has this in the footnotes:

"This knowledge is privilege which God reserves to himself ... it does not mean Omniscience which fallen creatures do not possess. Neither is it moral discrimination, for unfallen man already had it and God could not refuse it to a rational being. It is the power of deciding for himself what is good and evil and of acting accordingly, a claim to complete moral independence by which man refuses to recognise his status as a created being. The first sin was an attack on God's sovereignty, a sin of pride. This rebellion is described in concrete terms as the transgression of an express command of God for which the text uses an image of forbidden fruit."

Of course, the New Jerusalem and Tyndale House represent very different Christian traditions, so it is not surprising that their footnotes differ.

[Sigurd]

The Question:

If Adam and Eve did not know the difference between Good and Evil, how would they know it was evil to disobey God and eat the apple?

It was inevitable.

As a student of religion I have not encountered what exactly this forbidden fruit was. What I do know is that they could not obey all Gods commandments unless they became mortal. Mortality is somehow necessary to have offspring and was linked to partaking of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

Before anyone says that the forbidden fruit was sexual sin, must I remind them that Adam and Eve was man and wife lawfully wedded by deity himself. Besides, the very first commandment given them by deity and hence probably the most important was to multiply and fill the earth.

[zukenft]

Hmm....If A&E didn't know the meaning of "good" and "evil" before eating the fruit, then it is useless to tell them that it's evil whatever...
but as your usual child, it is necessary for them to learn by experience.

[Strike For The South]

They didnt know about evil in the sense of pain suffering hunger after they ate the fruit God bestowed these things upon them (pain during birth farming etc.) They knew it was wrong to eat from the tree and wrent going to until the serpent or the devil poisioned there mind sinto doing so The story goes along with putting your life in Gods hands and resisting temptation

[Don Corleone]

First off, Adam & Eve are an allegory. They did have free will. In choosing to do what God told them not to, they committed the first sin. The whole point of the story is: 1) free will doesn't mean that there won't be consequences 2) anything that deviates from what God wants is inherently evil. In a sense, by deciding for themselves other than what God wanted, you could argue that Adam & Eve 'created' evil. People like to point to the serpent, but I wonder if that's not just supposed to represent our own willful nature.

Have you ever noticed that even when you want to do a good deed, when somebody orders you to do it, you want to do something else, just to be spiteful? I think it's that spirit of spite that the serpent represents. My 2 cents.

[lancelot]

c. We can also say that Evil is the absence of Good. Evil is not the opposite of Good, because this assumes the two are finite and measurable. Evil is the absence of Good like darkness is the absence of light. Is there a source of darkness? Do you have an object that creates darkness? Of course not. So to with Evil. You cannot create evil.

Well, I question the comparison of good/light, evil/darkness. I dont see how not being able to create darkness means there is no way to create evil.

That seems a pretty 'opinioned' basis for your argument to rest on...