I am sure this has been asked before, but if God is all knowing, why did he put the Tree of Knowledge between good and evil in the Garden of Evil, oops I mean Garden of Eden ?

If he is the perfect God, wouldn't this imply that he is perverse in nature and actually enjoys seeing humanity squirm ? Doesn't it additionally imply that how God defines good is a dark contrast to how we define it ?

I am not sure, but it could be possible I posted this in the wrong forum. Could a moderator verify this and if so put it in the correct one ?

You'd think HE would have warned them about the snake, too.

Rasak,
Some might say that people need a context to exercise free will. If there was no chance for evil, then Adam and Eve wouln't have a choice but to be good, and where's the hell, I mean fun, in that?

In his Confessions, Augustine realizes that evil is not a substance, but is the absense of good. So really the tree was the knowledge of good and absense of good, I guess. So then you could reason that the tree didn't really matter, it was the choice to disobey god which lead Adam to an experiencial knowledge of evil by not doing good. The tree was just the mode of testing.

It is argued that man brought evil into the world, but it if the Bible is right, then god knew about evil before he put man in the world, knew that he would choose it(after making the choice to put the tree there), and knew that billions would burn because of it. I find that problematic. Free will could have had a better context, like do you want a coke or pepsi. Why set people up for failure, just to show them how scrificial you are a few thousand years later? But if you miss your chance, then oh well.

"Why did God put the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden? What purpose did it serve? Did God Himself need the knowledge of good and evil? Did He have to take a piece of the magical fruit now and again to refresh His memory? We can assume that He did not. Did any of the animals of the Garden need the Tree? We can assume not. What kind of tree was this?
How could a tree, an organism of wood and sap, contain the knowledge of good and evil? What capacity did it have for storing such knowledge, and how was that knowledge passed on by eating and digesting it? Allow yourself to think about that... Why, therefore, among all the useful and decorative trees in the Garden of Eden, did God deliberately include this tree, the tree that carries the warning: "in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die"?


Did He put it in the Garden as a temptation to tempt Adam and Eve? The bible says very clearly that cannot be the case. God does not tempt: "Let no man say . . . I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth He any man." (James 1:13) Therefore, we have a tree of a nature that we cannot comprehend, whose fruit is so sinful to consume that it would result in the immediate and eternal damnation of humankind, placed in a location so precarious as to make that outcome an inevitability, all apparently for no purpose whatever. Imagine a caring, loving parent leaving a loaded pistol in the playroom of a five year old child, knowing full well what the result will be, and watching from a crack in the door as the child blows his brains out.


Did God know Eve would eat the fruit? Of course He did! We are told by the bible that God knows all things from the Beginning unto the End. Did He not know Eve would give it to Adam? Of course He did. Did He not know that the serpent would tempt Eve? He did, if we are to accept the bible. Therefore, did Eve have any free will in the matter? Could she have acted in a manner other than God had foreseen for her? Of course not! How could she? How was the serpent able to speak? Did it give itself this remarkable ability? How does the mouth of a snake, with no lips or proper teeth, and no articulate tongue, form human words? How did the tiny brain of a snake become wise and subtle? Who made it so? Who was responsible for putting the principle actors-- Adam, Eve, the serpent and the Tree-- all together in the Garden of Eden? God, of course. The inescapable conclusion? That He put all the pieces on the game board, and enacted His own little drama, resulting in the deliberate, eternal damnation of Humankind. In the words of Ingersoll: could a devil have done worse? "


From www.losingmyreligion.com check it out! A great site!!!!

The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is symbolic of the law, and of which holds the blessing and the cursing according to obedience or disobedience.

Adam and Eve were instructed to eat only the good fruit so they would not suffer the consequences of their disobedient behavior. They were instructed to obey the law.

Big D:
There are a lot of points I disagree with in the logic of your quotation. But the one I find most amusing is its short dismisal of Free Will because God is all-knowing. That in one paragraph it can declare a contradiction on a point of theology that has been the subject of much debate and on which many books have been written, demonstrates that its author is either ignorant, stupid, or deliberately deceptive.

Whether the point has been debated by one or a thousand is irrelevent, as is your opinion of Big D.

Could anyone please show me where in the bible it says that Eve and Adam ate from the tree of knowledge? My bible says that man and woman ate from the apple (tree of knowledge). Is this maybe because I have a Catholic bible or don't you people know how to read.

Amos

Whether you think level of the point's debate is irrelevant is irrelevant, as is your opinion of my opinion of Big D.

Can we be serious now?
What do you mean my opinion of Big D is irrelevant? I don't have any opinion about Big D: I've read one of his posts in which one line is written by him (the rest is quoted from another source presumably not written by him). I hardly think one line is sufficient to form any opinion about anyone. So what on earth are you talking about??

The level of past debate on an issue is important. The quoted passage in one paragraph accepts the ideas of Free Will and an all-knowing God to be contradictory and concludes that there is no free will and goes on to draw further conclusions. Given the inconclusiveness of the massive volumes of work produced and time spent on this subject, I hardly except to see something which in one paragraph accepts one side of the argument and denies the other by logical argument, while pretending that this is a simple issue. The author must either be ignorant of all past and present discussion on the topic, may merely be stupid, or may have knowledge but is deliberately with-holding it in order to decieve the reader.