Quote:
Originally Posted by Trapped
The tree of the knowledge of good and evil wasn't death. It was good for food and it made you like God, knowing good and evil, so under no logical extrapolation could the tree itself be death or signify death. It was a tree and God forbid eating of it.
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This is how I see it, too. Knowledge of good and evil really means having God's level of knowledge of these things.
God wanted us to find guidance through relationship with him. The tree of knowledge of good and evil means you don't need this relationship. So it is the Tree of Independence from God. It is the same tree Satan ate from, which is why he recommended it.
The knowledge of good and evil the tree represented was not just general knowing, for example, that love is good and killing is bad. It was moral knowledge of EVERYTHING, a knowledge with no "gray areas"--even the knowledge of when love is bad and killing is good. To subsist independently and successfully with such knowledge one must have the power and the emotional capability to handle it.
In short, one must effectively be God. God never intended us to be become like him by such a path, and though our knowledge will increase through the proper path of knowing him, it will probably never reach such a level.
So knowledge of good and evil of the kind the tree represented is not bad per se, it was just something that was not intended for us.