Regardless of if you take the story of man's creation in the Bible literally, or as a metaphor for man's downfall in sin…
Why did God forbid eating of the Tree of Knowledge? Why would he be against the act of man finding knowledge and learning instead of just being a mental slave?
For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief. Ecclesiastes 1:18
Not just any knowledge, the knowledge of good and evil. Anyone selling you a morality/ideology that's not from God is probably a deceiver trying to ruin your paradise.
According to many Church Fathers it was a temporary commandment that was given for two reasons
1. As a test of obedience
2. Because man was not yet mature enough for that knowledge.
I remember reading an interpretation of this on a thread here awhile back where it could have been God's intention for Adam and Eve to eat from the tree of life, given how accessible he made it for them. Possibly as a test and further completion of the bestowing of free will on mankind since having it in the fullest sense would require knowledge of good and evil.
How_to_spot_a_Gnostic.exe
Pre-fall Adam and Eve were not mental slaves, slaves do not get to name every living thing on the Earth, nor are they accredited as high-priests and high-stewards in the Temple of Creation. Once cast out of Eden, they had to await the arrival of their salvation, Jesus Christ.
M8, the Tree of Knowledge contained true knowledge. The actual restriction was placed because they weren't ready.
Would you like it if you were red/blackpilled about the world at age 8, or just protected form it till 18, upon which you would be redpilled on it?
I thought the tree was what gave Adam and Eve the ability to decide what they thought was good and evil.
blackpilled implies atheistic – or rather, nihilistic – absolute truth. If you're giving your kid a hard sell on reductive materialist atheistic nihilism, you should do it early so they can deal instead of springing it on them and making them a nervous wreck.
Adam and Eve, on the other hand, would not have had this dilemma. They personally knew of God and, before their fall, were immortal. The two things that blackpill anyone (doubt in God/purpose and mortality) only occurred after the Fall (immediately after for mortality, and after God decided to stop physically being present and active as Christ incarnate for two thousand years for doubt). You average person, increasingly so in the West, is not primarily exposed to religion, and without a confirmation of God, ascribing to the morality of Christianity makes no sense. It's not really that fun, and you've only got so much time: why hold yourself back? Logically, it's unappealing.
You could say that's because humanity is fallen, but it's just as well because an increasingly "show-me" culture is naturally going to part ways with a faith if God demands belief without bestowing knowledge. You cannot experimentally confirm God.
The "knowledge" of good and evil means moral relativism. To decide for yourself instead of taking God's mandate inside creation.
Basically, Satyn was the first to say "it's just your opinion maaan".
Because we weren't ready yet. If he wanted us as ignorant slaves he wouldn't have made the tree at all. He wanted a relationship with humanity first, then after we had that relationship he would have let us partake the fruits. Instead we were tempted by the idea that we could be better than God and then cowered in fear instead of honestly repenting.
This is another thing that makes it hard to fit science and faith together. Science dictates by physical law that the universe cannot last forever physically in an inhabitable state, and there's nothing to indicate that God altered the basic method by which thermodynamics functions just for the Fall because those thermodynamic principles were required physically for creation in the first place. Unless we discover FTL is possible or nonconservative force, genesis and revelation are physically incompatible with one another
What
I've heard both of the reasons in this thread before (1. that they were not yet ready for it, and 2. that the "knowledge of good and evil" was man's deciding what is good and evil for himself). Both make sense. I don't know the answer, but it definitely is not because God wanted man to be ignorant slaves forever.
The universe can last an incredibly long time, but current physics heavily suggests it can't actually last forever.
So it depends on the interpretation of Heaven and Earth passing away before New Earth
The current universe will probably be accelerated, or something of the sort, after the events in Revelations take place.
I'll just leave this here
The main problem is that man rebelled against his creator, much less about the fruit itself.
Can someone expand on this idea of the eating of the fruit being linked to moral relativism, and which meant Adam and Eve would have been able to define good and evil for themselves?
Is this actually implied anywhere in the text? Like I don't understand how it makes sense to frame it in these terms - God is the arbiter of what is and is not good. To my mind them taking the fruit was simply an act of disobedience, pride. To use the phrase 'moral relativism' (or more colloquially 'man deciding what is good and evil for himself') as implied in a couple of these posts suggests that people think it would have actually been logically possible for Adam and Eve to set the moral order following their eating of the fruit had God not kicked them out from the garden acursed. Which is ridiculous. Why (or how) would you have 'relative morality' understood in this context as an actual concrete concept as if it actually exists and is true when you're coming from a starting point of the opening chapters of the holy book of the one true God, by definition the arbiter of goodness, objective morality, sin, holiness, justice etc. The why and how questions are rehtorical. You can't and it's not possible and bringing in the concept of moral relativism in some of the senses put forward in these posts just seems confused (and unecessary). These posts >>742751 phrase it as if eating of the fruit embued some kind of magical power to define what is good and evil for the eaters themselves. I don't know if I'm trying to sympathetically mock this idea or this is something I've completely missed and is actually in the text. Either way to my mind it seems much simpler to just frame it in the terms of disobedience rather than anything expressed in the sentiments already critqued above. Sorry if I'm misunderstanding and being an autist about nothing. For what it's worth I'm inclined to agree with >>742459 >>743723
The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. It was about man substituting his own ideas of what is right and wrong for God's ideas.
God put that rule in place because He created Adam & Eve as He does with all His creations; With Free Will. So when Lucifer tempted them, they gave in because of their free will and let him decieve them into believing they would obtain something of even greater spiritual value with no cost, even though they were already satisfied with God. When something is free, you're the product.
Is there anything more prideful than rejecting what God has set as Good? No, as it also is the origin of all pride. One can not be prideful without being a moral relativist and one can not be humble without submiting to God's morality.
Dying as in eternal death as in hell. When they ate from the tree we all became sinners doomed to hell before Jesus. Even now you cannot stop committing mortal sins regularly. You know they're wrong but you do them anyway. Was this what God was trying to prevent?
Ver. 9 The tree of knowledge. To which the deceitful serpent falsely attributed the power of imparting a superior kind of knowledge beyond that which God was pleased to give.
The tree of knowledge, could not communicate any wisdom to man; but, by eating of its forbidden fruit, Adam dearly purchased the knowledge of evil, to which he was before a stranger.
True obedience does not inquire why a thing is commanded, but submits without demur. Would a parent be satisfied with his child, if he should refuse to obey, because he could not discern the propriety of the restraint? If he should forbid him to touch some delicious fruits which he had reserved for strangers, and the child were to eat them, excusing himself very impertinently and blasphemously, with those much abused words of our Saviour, It is not what enters into the mouth that defiles a man, &c. would not even a Protestant parent be enraged and seize the rod, though he could not but see that he was thus condemning his own conduct, in disregarding, on the very same plea, the fasts and days of abstinence, prescribed by the Church and by God's authority? All meats are good, as that fruit most certainly was which Adam was forbidden to eat; though some have foolishly surmised that it was poisonous; but, the crime of disobedience draws on punishment.
I think this idea is silly because there's no reason to link the apple to moral relativism.
Its a problem we're facing in modern ages and another expression of evil rather than the evil itself. We've had evil people that weren't morally relativistic, which firmly believed in whatever they did.
With the addendum that I just noticed now that a lot of people are using moral relativism with "Not agreeing with God" which is confusing to any non-christian onlookers.
It was there to give mankind the option to disobey God. God, being ultimately good, gave us our freedom to choose.
knowledge of good and evil. when you know what good and evil are, you can redefine them to fit your own purposes, you can say, "this is good", or "this is evil", which is exactly what God just spent the previous chapters doing. By eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, Adam and Eve were trying to be powerful like God, rather than commune with him and imitate his nature.
Perhaps God shouldn't have put a tree there in the first place.
Are you blaming God now?
Are you victim blaming?
Do you think you're in your polysci/social studies class right now?
Non arguments like "victim - oppressor dialectics" don't work here.
You can't be a victim of your own actions, they originate from you.
Pretty good lecture actually, answered a lot of questions i had about genesis. And gave it as fair of a look as, we can that's humanely possible. And it's not so simple as the strawman that a lot of people who aren't into biblical history/Theology. Just say*You believe in walking talking snakes, you believe….*. So much for the septic community.
You have free will, so use it.
A lot of people here say it was just a test, why would God need to test anything, The Lord is all knowing is he not?
I asked a similar question but my question was "Did Adam and Eve know the Good before they ate of The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil". The answer is yes. All they knew was the Good. So that tree, I don't know why it wasn't just simply called The Tree of Knowledge of Evil, but it had the effect of revealing evil to Adam and Eve. I suspect maybe that it revealing the Evil it also allowed for God to demonstrate more of the Good than what otherwise would have been known. So I think Eve probably wanting to know more of her God, and being ignorant of what sin would do to her, probably could not help but eat from that tree because her nature was to love God and want to Know Him. That is my guess.
Yeah ok fine I get where people like you and others using similar phrasing like this are coming from
Ya, it is confusing isn't it, hence my post inc.
But wait
Where is this implied in the text??
Guess it's not then?
This might open a can of worms that invovles providence, predestination, molinism, philosphy of time and other kinda head scratching topics
So I think Eve probably wanting to know more of her God,
No
< Gen 2:17 for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die
Sounds like a wholly unjust God who unnecessarily cursed them as punishment on this guess