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.

[tackattack]

Sorry I didn't take the time to get caught up on where we are. IMO to the OP question: Was sin necessary for knowledge?
I would answer no. Sin is not an object, state or a place it is defined as "a transgression of God's law". Therefore knowledge is necessary for sin, but sin isn't necessary for knowledge. You would need a law or something to transgress against to be able to sin.

[Catholic_Lady]

It's hard for me to answer this because I don't adhere to the literal interpretation of the Adam and Eve story. I think we evolved from apes, and at some point we became intelligent enough to understand right from wrong. That is when sin became a thing. So on the contrary I would say knowledge is necessary for sin. Animals are innocent because they don't have knowledge of good and evil and therefore cannot sin. We evolved from animals. At one point we couldn't sin, but as we became more intelligent, we obtained moral culpability and thus the ability to sin.

This is kind of a rushed response because I'm in the middle of stuff as I'm posting, but hopefully it makes sense.

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Sorry I didn't take the time to get caught up on where we are. IMO to the OP question: Was sin necessary for knowledge?
I would answer no. Sin is not an object, state or a place it is defined as "a transgression of God's law". Therefore knowledge is necessary for sin, but sin isn't necessary for knowledge. You would need a law or something to transgress against to be able to sin.

Hah, I made my response that knowledge is necessary for sin before I read this. 

Great minds! I like you already.

[tackattack]

It's hard for me to answer this because I don't adhere to the literal interpretation of the Adam and Eve story. I think we evolved from apes, and at some point we became intelligent enough to understand right from wrong. That is when sin became a thing. So on the contrary I would say knowledge is necessary for sin. Animals are innocent because they don't have knowledge of good and evil and therefore cannot sin. We evolved from animals. At one point we couldn't sin, but as we became more intelligent, we got moral culpability and thus the ability to sin.  

This is kind of a rushed response because I'm in the middle of stuff as I'm posting, but hopefully it makes sense.

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Sorry I didn't take the time to get caught up on where we are. IMO to the OP question: Was sin necessary for knowledge?
I would answer no. Sin is not an object, state or a place it is defined as "a transgression of God's law". Therefore knowledge is necessary for sin, but sin isn't necessary for knowledge. You would need a law or something to transgress against to be able to sin.

Hah, I made my response that knowledge is necessary for sin before I read this. 

Great minds! I like you already.

Great. That made sense to me. Leaving aside the figurative or literal interpretation you believe that intelligence and the ability to think rationally and maturely gives creatures the necessary equipment to sin?

[pocaracas]

" Was sin necessary for knowledge?"

Within the world of the tale, didn't god command the created humans not to do a particular thing? Not to eat fruits from a particular tree? The tree of knowledge...
The creation only had to obey, like good little troopers.

But a saboteur infiltrated the creation and persuaded the poor human soldiers to go against the original order from the general(?) president(?), king(?)...
One must wonder, from where in creation did the saboteur crawl out of? In those 6 days of creating stuff, there is nothing mentioned of creating this particular creature, is there?
How does the narrative end up having it in there, then? Why don't we see more people questioning this detail of the story?

Anyway, had God wanted to do things differently, by giving knowledge to mankind without them having to go through a disobedience of his command, then the answer to your question is no. Sinning was not necessary.
God should have been fully capable of providing knowledge to its creation.... heck, he did encase it in a fruit, after all.

[vulcanlogician]

I think it's the other way around as Khem has been saying. Without moral knowledge, "sin" becomes impossible.

I personally find meaning in the Adam and Eve story when interpreted in the way CL has done above. When we evolved to have enough intelligence to distinguish moral and immoral behavior, we then became morally responsible.

[The Grand Nudger]

That the authors availed themselves of poetic license means that any literalist reading is bound to end up containing elements of thematic fiction-as-fact.  

Things like the tree, the fruit, and the dragon.  

As a just so story the main take-away should probably be that human beings were once favored, but disobeyed god in a meaningful and consequential way, and this sets the stage for the rest of the narrative.  Trying to tease out the relationship between sin and knowledge (and other bits of theology) from it (in any reading, literalist, allegory, metaphor, composite) is, imo, a futile endeavor.  This was a quick story, the narrator was not attempting to establish such a relationship nor was the narrator particularly concerned with whatever thorny theological issues that might be contained within or might one day arise pursuant to extra-narrative commitments of faith.

[Catholic_Lady]

It's hard for me to answer this because I don't adhere to the literal interpretation of the Adam and Eve story. I think we evolved from apes, and at some point we became intelligent enough to understand right from wrong. That is when sin became a thing. So on the contrary I would say knowledge is necessary for sin. Animals are innocent because they don't have knowledge of good and evil and therefore cannot sin. We evolved from animals. At one point we couldn't sin, but as we became more intelligent, we got moral culpability and thus the ability to sin.  

This is kind of a rushed response because I'm in the middle of stuff as I'm posting, but hopefully it makes sense.

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Hah, I made my response that knowledge is necessary for sin before I read this. 

Great minds! I like you already.

Great. That made sense to me. Leaving aside the figurative or literal interpretation you believe that intelligence and the ability to think rationally and maturely gives creatures the necessary equipment to sin?

Yes sir!

[tackattack]

I think it's the other way around as Khem has been saying. Without moral knowledge, "sin" becomes impossible.

I personally find meaning in the Adam and Eve story when interpreted in the way CL has done above. When we evolved to have enough intelligence to distinguish moral and immoral behavior, we then became morally responsible.

That would entirely depend on your definition of sin and morality. If you define sin as: what is morally wrong to my person, then a moral knowledge would be necessary. I do not define sin that way so I disagree and we have not discussed morality

Do you define morality as having conscience or remorse for perceived wrongdoing?
If you do, by CL and your definition: Socipaths couldn't sin because they have no moral knowledge

I'm open to persuasion though.

[The Grand Nudger]

Sociopaths are more often than not perfectly aware of the moral status of their actions - they just don't care.  I don't think that they make the best example.  Very young children, or "innocents" by any other description might be a better example of the set.