God is cruel

Again, the answer to both your queries is, they knew His voice.Tools? The "ears to hear."

So far you have not shown any reason that knowing his voice would enable them to know right from wrong. Please explain that?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Faith seems certain it could only be ego. You seem certain it could only be lack of knowledge. In the midst of so much Biblical ambiguity, so much certainty seems unwarranted.--Percy

So we're nearling the end of this thread and no one has shown that God is not cruel.I have posed the same question over and over and nothing.I think purpleyouko summed it up when he/she said that it is faith speaking.
to me, the actions of the God of the bible reflect a cruel God.1)The fall, and the fact that humanity is paying for theactions of A&E is neither fair nor just.2)the notion that an innocent newborn child would pay for the sins of its parents is neither fair nor justSo, God has acted to bring about a situation which is neither fair nor just. it follows that God is neither fair nor just.

That's often the story when examining folk lore. Here we are, looking at tales that were probably told about 4000 years ago. They were probably repeated around the campfire for over a thousand years, told, retold, embellished, revised before finally being put into writing.The first hurdle is to try to place oneself in the position, the point of view of the person from that era. What was the message they were trying to tell? Why did they create the legend?Perhaps even harder is determining what the relevance of the story is today. What can we learn from the story? Why was it important enough to be included? Why did the people compiling the Torah include two such dissimilar and mutually exclusive tales?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

I'm sorry does reading a text for what it says mean nothing anymore? Wouldn't you think if death was a common thing in the garden they would speak of it?
But thats all it is;an assumption you don't know this for sure, unless you have some evidence that they did, i can't very well take your word for it I'm saying as morals are purely a human construct animals can't be moral in the sense that we can be, they are amoralwhat does genesis 1.25 have to do with morals?or job? it would be nice if you could post the begining and ending lines, because anyone can make the bible say anything No i'm saying that animals have no morals to begin with so the idea of contrasting them with humans is wrong, whether or not they are rebellious. Do you think wolves worry about whether its morally right to kill deer? or kill cattle?
you are trying to force something on animals that will not work.
if this is not close to what you want to say then make it clearer please i think it did, it made them have something other animals will not have, morals and knowlege of something higher than the needs of the body - do you think sheep care about anything higher than "were is my next meal?" that is just common religious beliefs, of course people would believe that god controls nature and animals if he wants he is god after all
as for balaam, he may have not expected an angel, animals have better perception of events, mostly because they don't have all the crap we deal with. its because of all the stuff we added with the advancement of civiliation, if you are not worrying about where your next meal is coming from or if you will die in the next day if you don't have a place to hide, then you can fill your time with things that are not needs - art, discourse, war, etc not biblical figures, but just people in general in and out of the bible. seems to me that from the lines you posted, theirs nothing on animal morality in the bible did you even read what i said, the author may have tried to use the snake to mean what you said, but no believer remotely believes this historicly or now. the jews thought it was a snake argueing with god, the christians think its satan - this is what i mean. this quote is irrelevent to what i said, and is rather OT anyway. What i mean about the time travel is that since we have no evidence the authors or anyone during the time it was written believed anything you put forth, you can't very well say its remotely right

Oh for heaven's sake. God is good. God is truth. God cannot lie. Whatever God says is right. If you know His voice and obey Him you cannot go wrong. This ought to be obvious. Adam and Eve were in intimate communication with God before the Fall. They were spiritually intact. It was after the Fall that they lost the ability to discern His presence or His voice, even trying to hide from Him. They had been told not to eat of the fruit. Only wilful disobedience would have led them to that. They would certainly know the serpent's voice was not the voice of God.

There is no ambiguity.The desire to be like God is what led Eve to eat the fruit. There is nothing ambiguous about understanding that her motive was pride, the desire to be like God.

Many shades of the above, no doubt, I'm simply emphasizing ego because that is obviously implicit in her desire to be equal with God and most of your list are simply versions of ego anyway. Whatever her motive it was clearly sin, clearly disobedience of a direct command of God's, and put herself in competition with God.For jar's interpretation to be true -- his insistence that they were innocently ignorant and therefore could not sin, he has to find God in the wrong for punishing them, which is completely at odds with the whole scriptural message. He is painting an evil God.This message has been edited by Faith, 04-14-2006 10:58 PM

That's OK. I'm sure some day you'll find God to be every bit as cruel as you now think He is.

How could they know right from wrong before eating from the Tree of Knowledge? It was eating from the Tree of Knowledge that gave them the ability to know right from wrong. I looked through everything you posted and still see nothing related to that question.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

The knowledge of good and evil is not equivalent to knowing right from wrong. That is your own gloss on the story. They knew no evil because they had perfection in Eden, and were in perfect harmony with God.

You still haven't explained it. What was supposed to teach them right from wrong before eating from the fruit? Only after eating from the fruit did they realize what they had done was wrong. Before eating from the Fruit they had no way to know what was right behavior or wrong behavior.Tell me, did they know that they were naked before eating from the fruit?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Jamieson Fausset and Brown:
tree of the knowledge of good and evil--so called because it was a test of obedience by which our first parents were to be tried, whether they would be good or bad, obey God or break His commands.Matthew Henry:
[2.] There was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, so called, not because it had any virtue in it to beget or increase useful knowledge (surely then it would not have been forbidden), but, First, Because there was an express positive revelation of the will of God concerning this tree, so that by it he might know moral good and evil. What is good? It is good not to eat of this tree. What is evil? It is evil to eat of this tree. The distinction between all other moral good and evil was written in the heart of man by nature; but this, which resulted from a positive law, was written upon this tree. Secondly, Because, in the event, it proved to give Adam an experimental knowledge of good by the loss of it and of evil by the sense of it. As the covenant of grace has in it, not only Believe and be saved, but also, Believe not and be damned (Mk. 16:16), so the covenant of innocency had in it, not only "Do this and live,’’ which was sealed and confirmed by the tree of life, but, "Fail and die,’’ which Adam was assured of by this other tree: "Touch it at your peril;’’ so that, in these two trees, God set before him good and evil, the blessing and the curse, Deu. 30:19. These two trees were as two sacraments.Guzik:
... it may very well be that it is called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil not so that man would know good and evil, but so that God could test good and evil in manThis message has been edited by Faith, 04-14-2006 11:25 PM

The following is David Guzik's commentary on the meaning of their seeing their nakedness, which is pretty much in line with the others I looked at. Nakedness is a concept in scripture that is about our sinful nature's being exposed to condemnation. "Covering" is about our sins being forgiven. When we are saved we are "clothed" in Christ's righteousness. It is like the Israelites in Egypt having the blood of the lamb painted on their door frames, a covering of sorts to protect them from the avenging angels of judgment. (It is also no doubt what the common dream of being naked in public is all about.) It is not so much about nakedness per se as about exposure to judgment, though as Guzik points out, something must have changed in the physical sense too when they disobeyed.