Ok. I would like to tell you that the tree of "the knowledge of good and bad" was just a tree, it was a fruit tree, but it didn't have any special "properties";
Ok, I agree with you there, but you later disagree with yourself.
I don't want to post too much here from your article, but love is so much more than "an emotional attribute." I've just leave it there.
Well it depends on your definition of love. I like to think it's deeper than just a biological and chemical response to external stimulii, (I.E. it's a conscious decision), but I'm not to sure that's not wishful thinking.
I understand that you think this "tree of life" to have been the source of everlasting life, but this isn't "evident" to me, and this may be because I cannot wrap my mind around the idea of a tree having something that even God's son didn't have until he was granted to have life in himself, and this was after his baptism, This sounds to me like you think of the tree of life as a kind of "magic tree," a tree imbued with properties that could give to anyone that eats of its fruit everlasting life, except Adam didn't know about the tree of life.
So we agree the tree of life was symbolic. Otherwise let's leave Jesus out of it. He wasn't relevant to what happened in the Garden of Eden unless you believe in predestination. As you mentioned, Adam didn't have the Bible, and he surely didn't know about Jesus. Obviously, if Adam hadn't sinned, Jesus' sacrifice wouldn't have been needed. Oh, and the WT says eventually Adam would have gotten immortality if he hadn't sinned. So obviously the means exists outside of Jesus sacrifice, even if it wasn't in the form of a tree.
What "properties"? I don't see a thing that could confuse you here. The Bible doesn't talk about properties.
You know what he's talking about. When a noun is proceeded by adjectives, it's describing properties of the noun. For example, if I say "that douchebag djegnogg", I'm referring to someone who has surpassed the level of jerk or asshole, however has not yet reached fucker or motherfucker.
What's the nexus between Adam and Eve's having been created in God's likeness and the fact that they rebelled against God's rulership by opting for self-rule?
You avoided the question, and attributed God's response to sarcasm. I'm sure there must be another example of God being sarcastic (seriously there must be), but no, it doesn't count when the prophet sarcastically asked if a false god was using the privy.
This was Lie #1.
Well, interpetations of 1,000 yrs and spiritual death aside, they didn't die anytime soon. Inference and interpetations = mental gymnastics.
Adam and Eve were like the teenager that decides that now that he has finished high school and has a job, he can now emancipate himself and move away from home and get his own apartment, so that he no longer has to do any of the chores he hated doing, except he comes to the realization that apartment life means more than just paying the rent. This was Lie #2.
Not the best analogy, seeing as most teenagers move out for some reason along these lines, but eventually have a successful life and don't suffer a death sentence. Still, from my days in JW-land where any sort of independence was devil-induced, I understand the point you're trying to make.
The serpent told Eve that she wouldn't die
It depends on how technical you want to get. God told them they would die in the day of eating the fruit, but evidently he meant a thousand year day. Satan told Eve she wouldn't die that die, and evidently he meant a solar day.
and misled her into believing something to be true about her becoming like God in knowing what is good and bad that clearly wasn't true.
From your own words: "Furthermore, they had become like God"
As I say above, God was being sarcastic when he indicated that they had come to know "good and bad,"
People often read more into the Bible than it says.
Perhaps you are too.
I would suggest that you stop reading things into Scripture that isn't there and this will keep you from postulating things from non-facts.
/lol I know in your mind your interpetations are fact, but you are doing exactly what you warn against when you assign motives, emotions, and intentions to ambiguous passages in God's word.
Evidently Satan had no idea that God has designated any of the trees as a "tree of life," for in that case he would surely have said to Eve instead:
Once again telling us what God would have / should have said.
This might explain the reaction of Adam and Eve to their nakedness.
A guilty conscience would explain their peculiar behavior since they had sinned, they had previously had nothing about which to feel guilty. Adam gave he and his wife away by telling God that they were naked when God had never told either of them that they were naked. With that "confession," God knew exactly what has transpired.
Nothing really explains this. It's one thing to feel guilty for disobeying, it's another to feel guilty for a concept you know nothing about. If they all of the sudden realized that being naked was something to be ashamed of, we go back to the concept of the tree of knowledge having some magical aspect.
You seem to be of the opinion that the fruit that Adam and Eve ate that they should not have eaten poisoned their bodies or changed them in some way, but what is the scriptural basis for such speculation on your part?
Do the semantics really matter? The results are the same. Paradise lost. All descendents grow old and die. Whether the fruit was poisoned by God, or God decreed inherited death, or God terminated the power source, the results are the same.
