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How can they not be guilty of violating any 'rules' when they explicitly disobeyed the ONLY rule that god gave them.
As I have already pointed out, only animals and inanimate objects are free of moral judgments. Adam and eve were human beings exercising rational faculties and free will -- hence are culpable for their actions.
Again, foreknowledge on the part of god does not render free will on the part of humans moot. Free will is moot only when one is coerced or too ignorant to know the logical consequences of one's actions -- both of which are not the case in the genesis story.
At that moment of the fall of man (arising from his own folly) god's design to save man was put in effect -- from god's continuous self-revelation up to the crucifixion.
But they didn't know god from anyone else. Why would they choose to obey god, versus the serpent, versus any other chatty creature that happened into the garden? God had done nothing to identify himself, or describe what he stood for. Adam and Eve had nothing against which to compare the validity of the serpent's claims.
Why does anyone disobey a rule?
One disobeys a rule when one thinks he is not subject to that rule -- which was the proposition of the serpent in the first place.
Adam and eve wanted an existence that is not dependent on god's grace -- that they would be 'god's unto themselves' -- hence is a rejection of god.
Language is different from conceptual understanding. The ancients had a word for "lightning"* but they had no concept of electricity, ionization, or positive / negative charges. However, they still had a word. So having language wouldn't have enabled Adam to understand death.
* "barak" or some variant thereof, in case you were wondering
Last edited by Djinn; 22nd March 2017 at 09:26 AM.
And do you think there is reason to question god when you are already living in paradise?
As I have already said, man's fall was not due to ignorance. Ignorance, after all, is excusable. Nor is it about the acquisition of power. Man's rational faculty already gave him dominion over creation.
Man's fall is the result of rejecting god's grace -- the essential element on which his entire being is dependent on.