Adam and Eve Saved the Environment

[Tonus]

Right. Was there a need for them to?

That's a good point, I am not sure. As the human population grew and communities and societies developed, would it have been enough to not eat from a particular tree, or would more complex sets of behavioral codes have been needed?

Disagree, they were not ordered, they were given a commandment and were given the consequences for a wrong action. If there is consequences for an action there is choice.

But without a sense of right and wrong, the only reason for them to obey was the threat of death.

Right, but the serpent lied to her. She knew what God had told her.

That was my point. God told her, but gave her no reason to understand why. Thus, she was susceptible to deception when the serpent made up a reason. I think she would have been better prepared for the serpent's trickery had she understood why god did not want her to eat from the fruit of that tree.

Disagree, she understood eating the fruit was wrong, she explained to the serpent the consequences God had laid out, she understood it was wrong.

Without knowledge of good and evil, I don't see how she could comprehend that eating the fruit was wrong. She knew that she was told she must not eat from it, but the only reason was the threat of death. Normally this threat would be sufficient to scare a person into compliance. That she was so easily convinced to eat from it by a simple argument would imply that she lacked something necessary for making proper decisions. Same with Adam, who also ate from the fruit when offered some by Eve.

You are probably right since we take the effect of eating the fruit as immediate. I disagree with they did not know what was right or wrong, they understood the consequence of disobeying. Little children know right from wrong long before they understand good and evil.

Children learn that through experience and through development of their sense of empathy. As the only two humans around, Adam and Eve were reliant on god himself to help them develop a sense of right and wrong. And in spite of being perfect, and of being in a direct relationship with their creator, they failed a seemingly simple test.

I like the way the JWs interpret the story of Adam and Eve and the garden of Eden. To them, the fruit had no special inherent qualities; eating from it would not suddenly fill their minds with knowledge of anything. The tree could have been any tree in the garden. What it represented was the important thing-- god's right to tell humanity what to do because he knew best. For as long as they did not eat from that tree, Adam and Eve were recognizing that god was the boss. When they ate from it, they were telling god that they could decide for themselves what was right or wrong; they were rejecting his right to rule them.

Mind you, that approach has plenty of flaws of its own. But the idea of the tree being a symbol sounds much better than the idea that god put a tree with magic fruit that would allow man (or Satan, through an act of man) to derail his plans so easily. One of the most obvious flaws is that it conflicts with the claim that there was also a tree of life, whose fruit would keep them alive indefinitely. Which is probably why JWs tend to gloss over that particular part of the story, heh.