Was sin necessary for knowledge?

[The Grand Nudger]

Well, for starters, it makes the tree of knowledge of good and evil a redundant narrative prop..

Which it pretty much was. It could have been any command. Don't pet the orange cat would have done the same thing. I don't find this problematic. The issue is whether or not they obey God, not the particular command. I don't find this problematic.

That's even more problematic.  In this hypothetical version of the story sin is somehow determined by whether or not someone pets the cat, an impressively arbitrary reading of sin.  Further, had there been no command -not- to pet the cat..there would have been no means by which sin could enter the world.  

but, recall..it's already one layer deep into something problematic for the narrative.  That in order to sin, one must first have moral knowledge.  The entrence of sin into this world cannot then be laid at the feet of adam (or at the prop of the tree) but at the entity which created adam with such knowledge.

The knowledge isn't the sin. You noted yourself in your first post that God has the knowledge, but is sinless.

I noted only that sin was not required for knowledge, but we've both agreed that knowledge is required for sin.  Either adam was created with the knowledge required..or he observed sin in order to attain it..which means that sin had already entered the world to be observed by adam.  

Unfortunately, this proceeds through each problematic step and leads to ad hoc rationalizations not made explicit in the narrative (such as your suggestion that adam learned of sin by observing eve).

What's wrong with my reasoning regarding that point?

What could adam have been observing in watching eve, not sin..since it hadn't entered the world yet, or had it?  Regardless,  it was an ad hoc rationalization..which is generally frowned upon in reasonable explanations for anything. 

Ultimately, though, the problem lies more with the composite narrative than with yourself.  You, as a person of a specific type of faith..simply have to make choices between the various suboptimal and contradictory paths from one part of the story to the next.   There's little else -to- do but throw up ones hands and wish that the authors had done a better job.

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-adden, at least with the tree choice, that we've reduced to a prop..there was the threat of death.  Some reason not to eat the fruit.  OFC, we've already left that a few unfortunate choices behind. Petting the cat is a loss of moral authority, and since adam had moral knowledge, he'd have been able to work that out, unless he didn;t have moral knowledge (again, choices behind us) in which case neither eating the tree nor petting the cat could be sinful.