4) In Genesis, the first man and first woman are presented in a specific manner. First of all, God created Man before he created Woman. He formed him out of dust of the land and breathed in through his nostrils in order to give him the breath of life. God then created Eden, which was located in the east, had a tree of life and a tree of knowledge, and had four rivers (Pishon, Gihon, Tigris, and Euphrates). When Man arrived, God told him to eat from the tree of life and not from the tree of knowledge, which shows the difference between good and evil. If he ate from this tree, he would die. However, God then took one of Man's ribs and created his companion, Woman. After they were created, we read about the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. After reading this chapter, I cannot condemn her. Yes, she disobeyed God but I would have done the same thing in that position. Also, she did create pain of childbirth and the fall of mankind, but it was due to the fact that she had no prior knowledge. If she ate the fruit or was provided with knowledge before talking to the serpent, she wouldn't have caused this mess. As for Man, God gave him dominance, responsibility, and similarity of God himself. However, he listened to his wife when in reality, he should've told her no or talked to the serpent himself.
5) Personally, I think the Tree of Knowledge is a huge tease. Why provide the Tree if Adam and Eve couldn't eat from it. There is always a desire of knowledge within everyone so I don't know how God thought that they would be any different, even if they were the first people on Earth. Humans always want the desire to know more about their surroundings and life itself. Then again, he did give them the options of many other trees to eat from. However, I personally would've eaten from the Tree of Knowledge if I was in their position. I think the point of God's plan to have them not eat from that tree was so they didn't have to know what evil was. He wanted them to live a life of only knowing the good and being pure/innocent. However, the serpent (Satan) went against God himself and tried to tempt Eve to join him. After the whole scandal, not only did Adam and Eve ruin their pure evil-less relationship with each other, they ruined their relationship with God. God wanted them to trust Him and live a life of good. Also, God made sure that thetree was lovely to look at. God tried to almost to seduce them and see how far they would go trusting him. Obviously, they did not trust God's advice that much seeing as the first sin happened fairly early. This being said, I do believe there is a link between vision, desire, and knowledge. If something is visually appealing to you, you develop a strong desire to have it. In this case, Adam and Eve were not knowledgable of anything so when presented with the opportunity to be like God (as the serpent put it), they chose to take it.
6) Personally, I think there are some positives to Adam and Eve's punishments. If they stayed in Eden eternally, with no knowledge of evil, this type of life would not have accurately reflected the true human experience here on Earth. God wanted humans to have a life of no sin and enjoy His company to the fullest extent. However, I personally have learned and gained so much from making mistakes ("sins" if you will). How can we better ourselves if we can't mistakes and learn by them. How are we supposed to know how great our life is or how good we are doing if we have nothing to measure it up against (for example, evilness in the world)? This is why I think that there are some positives gained by Adam and Eve's punishment. For example, one of the consequences of Eve's actions was pain during childbirth. To many mothers out there, the pain shows their children in the future what they went through in order to have a child to love and call their own. The pain represents the extent to which our parents went to give us life. Also, God said they must work or kill for food. This is relevant to today because it shows to have determination, strength, and proactiveness in order to get that we want. In other words, we have to work for what we want. We don't necessarily have everything handed over to us. Lastly, God also said the lifespan will be limited, also known as everyone will die. This gives people a motive to live life to the fullest and appreciate the life they were given by their parents and by God himself. Therefore, I think that the punishments God gave Adam and Eve did, in fact, taint the overall view of humans and disobedience but it also shows how we take these punishments and make the most out of them.
