Original Sin

Originally posted by twhitehead
I don't think you have answered the question at all. If Adam and Eve were capable of making the right choice why didn't they? Why were they offered the choice in the first place?

If evil did not exist then how could the tree provide knowledge of it? Was the snake not evil (ie good). Was what Adam and Eve did also good? Or do you mean that evil was being kept away from them? Except apparently for the evil snake and the evil choice etc etc.

If Adam and Eve were capable of making the right choice why didn't they?
The man and the woman were obviously capable of making a decision, as the account specifically states. For an indeterminate amount of time, they made the 'right' choice, i.e., they continued in a communal relationship with God in the Garden--- "obeying" both His positive and negative commands.

Why were they offered the choice in the first place?
To settle Satan's charge that anyone other than God will default to the rebellion status initiated by him.

If evil did not exist then how could the tree provide knowledge of it?
Evil did not exist for them, as stated. Evil obviously existed as evidenced in the described chaos which followed sometime after the beginning and before the re-creation of chapter one, verse three.

Was what Adam and Eve did also good?
All that God had established in the re-creation was deemed 'good,' however, not in the distinctive sense to which you allude. There simply was no evil possible for the man and the woman to commit. The only 'bad' thing that could happen to them was also the worse thing that could possibly happen: dying.

Originally posted by Penguin
Does it say good and evil did not exist before they ate the fruit? It's not called the tree of [b]creation of Good and Evil, it's called the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

They were told they would die if they ate the fruit, however that was only the case if God expelled them from the garden. If he had allowed them to stay and they had the ...[text shortened]... punishing a colourblind person for being able to distinguish red from green.

--- Penguin.[/b]

They would not have died physically, which would have been a much worse fate than that for which God had already provided. Living forever without a spirit while separate from God is simply another description of hell... regardless of the other surroundings. That is not to infer that their eternal life of bliss in the Garden would have been perpetuated, absent God's presence: the exit of God signals the subtraction of happiness.