(July 27, 2013 at 6:57 am)Rationalman Wrote: If the tree that Adam and Eve ate from truly was the tree of knowledge of good and evil, that surely means they had no understanding of good and evil before they eat from the tree. So when they disobeyed God and ate from the tree, surely it wasn't their fault because they didn't know any better?
Indeed, they lacked wisdom by design. If they played the role of obedient, unquestioning puppets, they'd be okay. If they used the intellect and curiosity that they'd been designed with and acted freely, they would be punished. They weren't supposed to think for themselves.
One imagines that the Garden of Eden was actually one of those hedge mazes, and humanity was meant to wander it endlessly according to the strict path given them. To deviate even once meant catastrophe. The Bible shows that thinking for yourself leads to disaster. Just follow orders and you'll be fine.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
