Because of Adam's mistake, you feel it really shows us God's great love for the human race when he allows billions of people to die, some in terrible ways over the past thousand of years.
People want the freedom to do what they will. God allows them this. So the billions of people who die are a direct result of our choices. Including the first choice: Adam and Eve's, to choose their own way instead of following and trusting God and His way.
Would you kill your children for eating the chocolate after you had told them not to?
God did not kill Adam and Eve. They died as a result of what they did. A result God tried to warn them about to begin with.
So why would God then first lay down a law that forbids children to be punished for their fathers (Deuteronomy 24:16), but still have children inherit sin from their fathers and even threaten that he will bring punishment down to the fourth generation(Deuteronomy 5:9)?
Because we DO inherit sin from our fathers. We inherit their flaws, their prejudices, their way of thinking... sometimes we can rise above that, and sometimes not. We also inherit the world as our fathers left it for us, along with all its problems, prejudices, diseases, pollution, etc. So in that sense, children are punished for the sins of the fathers to however many generations. Not by God, though... by their own fathers.
But God does not punish a son for his father's sin. Each man/woman is accountable to God, for themselves and their own actions.
Why forbid knowledge of all things?
When you know that knowledge of one of those things is going to cause that person's death. (you don't want to know what that poison tastes like, my son... you will die.)
Tammy