Thank you for the reply, Katazia, and here are my responses.
Katazia said:
FACT 1 - Adam and Eve had no knowledge of good and evil before they ate the fruit.
Agreed
FACT 2 - Adam was being commanded not to do something.
Agreed
FACT 3 - Adam was being threatened with death if he disobeyed.
Which we agreed adam could not measure since he didn’t know what it was.
FACT 4 - To obey God is good, to disobey God is bad.
Agreed, which would involve trusting God’s word in this regard since they didn’t know what was good & evil.
FACT 5 - To live is good, to die is bad.
Same scenario as above since they would have to trust God for the definition of what is good & bad at this point.
FACT 6 - It is not possible to understand FACTs 4 and 5 without an understanding of what is meant by good and evil.
FICTION, since they did have an understanding of what is a good action & bad action from God’s definition (See Facts 4 & 5).
FACT 7 - Both the command and the threat would be meaningless to Adam since he did not possess the necessary knowledge required for comprehension.
FICTION, since God did define what was good and bad before eating the fruit. They did have knowledge of God’s definition of what was good and bad in regards to eating the fruit. Adam & Eve had knowledge what was good & bad behavior according to God’s definition. Eve recited the rule while conversing with the serpent. Therefore she understood that eating the fruit was something she was not suppose to do.
Katazia said:
The issue is whether God was just and fair to punish Adam for something he could not possibly have understood.
Actually the issue is whether Adam knew what to do and what not to do. Adam understood God’s definition of what was good & bad behavior in regards to the fruit, and Eve recited the rule while conversing with the serpent. They understood eating the fruit was something God told them not to do.
There is a fundamental difference between making the wrong decision because of pure ignorance and deliberately disobeying when all the choices were clear and understood.
But God had already told Adam & Eve not to eat the fruit. They already had God’s definition of good & bad behavior in regards to the fruit before they ate it. Yet they chose to disobey His command. (What part of “DO NOT EAT… ” did they not understand?)
For example imagine you are playing chess for the first time and did not understand the rules. The decisions you’d make would be based on guesswork and whether they were good or bad would be a matter of chance.
Agreed, but then I made the chose of playing chess without consulting a Grand Master of Chess in regards of how to play the game. If the Grand Master’s advise was not to play the game until I know the rules, or else I will lose, the fault would be mine since I chose to continue playing and disregard the advice of the Grand Master.
Every decision you make is a value judgment based on good or bad. To eat or not to eat, to step in front of a speeding car or not, to love or to hate, to go to work or call in sick, etc. etc. We take for granted that everything we do involves making such choices. Without the knowledge and understanding or the ability to judge good from bad then everything we’d do would be chaos and meaningless.
Agreed. There are written and unwritten laws that govern our lives that we inherently obey because they provide security and order in our society. And our daily lives are made up of choices, which are derived from what we know to be good or bad (although the end results may prove to be different). But if we know these laws and chose to disobey these laws, the consequences are our responsibility. We are accountable for our actions when we chose to disobey, not the lawgiver. Adam & Eve knew from God what was good & bad behavior in regards to eating the fruit. God told them not to eat, Eve recited the rule to the serpent, but yet they disobeyed God’s command. (Again, what part of “DO NOT EAT… ” did they not understand?)
To a large extent because of this lack of knowledge Adam and Eve could hardly be called human. Their outlook on everything would have been entirely alien to us.
And would you call babies hardly human even when they have a lack of knowledge of the world around them? You should rethink the logic in that statement.
And to trust God is good right, and to distrust him is bad, right? How would Adam be able to make that call?
God was providing for Adam’s needs in the Garden of Eden. And creating Eve to be by Adam’s side, and for sexual pleasure, is a reason to distrust God?
Every statement you attempt you make here that involves a value judgment will be dependent on Adam and Eve understanding how to evaluate what is good and what is bad.
But only if they are capable of understanding that trusting the parent is good and that punishment is bad. Without that ability to judge your command can have no effect.
But this is a wrong assumption. What you are implying is that children should have the ability to judge who is the good parent and bad parent at birth, or children should know what is the good rule or bad rule at the moment of birth, when you know that is not the case. Children get their sense of values from their parents since they provide for their children's needs.
We get our sense of good & bad behavior from obeying our parent’s rules. Since they provide for us & protect us, we in turn love & trust them.
But even when we begin to gather knowledge of what is good & evil, it does not guarantee obedience.
Exactly, because we have the ability to judge between good and bad, we take it for granted, Adam and Eve could not do that.
True, but they knew of God’s definition of what was good & bad behavior before they ate the fruit. Therefore, it depended on how much they trusted and respected God’s authority.
That is a circular argument since a knowledge of Right and wrong is needed to be able to meaningfully choose whether to trust or not.
Wrong assumption, since history can show you people who had the foreknowledge of what was right and wrong, yet chose to disobey & trust dictators and mass murderers.