braincleaned:
Okay, here's me trying to get my questions organized:
I'll go with your questions and try to the best of my ability to answer them, but remember this is an hypothetical scenario. I'm trying to speculate here within a framework that tries to conciliate evolution with the account we find in Genesis, and the Bible.
Q: What was the purpose of creating then testing these 'new' humans?
The purpose of creating this human couple directly was to generate a human couple fitted with a spiritual bond with God, truly, God's children. (Luke 3:38) In this scenario, they would be the very first Homo Sapiens that enjoyed that status. For some reason, the already existing Homo Sapiens couldn't be "retrofitted" with this spiritual bond, so God decided to make "Homo Sapiens 2.0", fitted with a "soul", that spiritual bond with their maker.
God didn't test these humans. If taken literally, the two trees in the garden of Eden and their fruits were symbolic of gaining access and insight into the spiritual realm [tree of knowledge of good and evil] and the reward of everlasting life in said realm [tree of life]. In time, once Adam and Eve fulfilled their purpose on earth (breeding descendants) and enjoy a long, happy life in the garden of Eden, they would gain access to that spiritual realm and life forever. The commandment that Jehovah gave to the first couple was nothing more that saying: "I get to decide when and if you can eat from these trees. For now, you cannot as much as touch them, otherwise you will die." It wasn't intended as a test, it became a test only when Satan incited Eve to develop the ambition to "be like God". Literally, as James wrote, " each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire." (James 1:14) Satan simply fueled this desire with his ambiguous oracle, but it was Eve's own desire that betrayed her - not God.
Q: Why would an Almighty God create a "slightly improved copy of the existing specimens of their time?"
Well, I guess for the reason I said above - because the existing humans couldn't be "retrofitted" with the sonship with God unless they were directly created by him. The garden of Eden was some sort of a test lab, with a controlled environment, where God experimented if it was feasable to produce "sons of God" out of material beings. He simply chose as subject tests the animals that he considered to be the most intelligent and sophisticated available: the Homo Sapiens. So he went and created two of them from scratch, but accurate copies of the existent ones back then.
Was God's Only Son a corresponding ransom to a "slightly improved copy of the existing specimen of their time", or was he perfect?
God's Only Son [Jesus Christ] was a corresponding ransom (I prefer the term redemption) to the first human "son of God", Adam, not because he had matching "perfection" [Jesus was perfect], but simply because he was ... human AND a son of God, brought about with an identical spiritual bond as Adam had.
If you " don't think they were fully aware of the consequences their disobedience would have", where is God's love for punishing them, and all humanity along with them?
Jehovah gave stern warning and it was frivolously ignored / disobeyed. They fell prey to Satan's rebellious agenda without even realizing they were puppets in a much bigger game that they couldn't possibly understand. In any case, they had been clearly warned. Death came, not as a result of a punishment, but merely as a natural consequence of rejecting their sonship towards God. If they had remained faithful to God, they would have at some point overcome the natural cycle of birth / decay / death by eating from the two trees and be rewarded with everlasting life in the spiritual realm along with the other "sons of God" in the spiritual realm. (Job 1:6; 2:1; 38:7) Since they lost that spiritual bond with God, they could not henceforth generate children gifted with that spiritual bond. So, Adam and Eve and their descendants became no different than all other Homo Sapiens that existed outside the garden of Eden, and therefore, while God felt an obligation to look after his creations, there was no point in keeping them within the controlled envoronment of the test lab, the garden of Eden, and they were expelled, and forced to mix with the other Homo Sapiens.
Q: how does God's justice work, that the non-adamic descendants are under the curse of Adam's sin?
They were just not gifted with the sonship towards God. There was no "curse" upon the non-adamic humans. That's the "original sin" - the lack of spiritual bond with God that results in death without hope of an afterlife in the spiritual realm. After Adam and Eve, God wanted to extend to all Homo Sapiens the possibility to become his children and gain everlasting life in the spiritual realm. But since it wasn't possible for humans that lacked the said spiritual bond of sonship (the 'soul', if you'd like). Therefore, God felt it was appropriate that his only begotted spiritual son, Jesus, becamethe first human after Eve to be born with the said spiritual bond of sonship, teach others on how could they acquire this bond through faith in his sacrifice, and then offered his own life in sacrifice as a fitting matching life regarding the life that Adam and Eve had lost for them and for their descendants.
I hope I have answered your questions reasonably to your satisfaction.
Eden
