Ah, I get you. The way I see it is that the tree wasn't evil in itself, only the action of eating from it against God's will. The evil was within Adam as a free agent and would be present with or without the tree. So why not place it? To not place it would just be God kidding himself that Adam would obey His command. Also the tree wasn't all that dangerous when viewed within Christianity's big picture. From the beginning God always intended to atone for that first sin and every sin since through Christ's crucifixion and ressurection. This atonement applies to all who want it, both those before and those after Christ's sacrafice. The atonement doesn't depend upon ourselves other than to take it or refuse it, so we can't spoil it again with our actions as Adam and Eve did. Instead it depends upon the grace and faithfulness of God. The danger of the tree (and all sin, for which the tree was a picture) is gone when viewed in the light of the Gospel later on. Like Will said in another thread, most people attempt to interpret Christianity with the (non-Christian) view that this life is all there is, and all that God has for us. When taken out of context like that things get messed up.
So are you suggesting that God, from day one, intended for mankind to fall so that he could give us the choice of following his son thousands of years down the road? So it was all just a setup for AD? Everything that happened in BC was just backplot?
Even if we assume that Adam had the capability for evil inside himself, if you don't give him an obvious instrument then he wont chose the evil. Make his wife have a smokin body, his food tasty, and the sex satisfying and Adam wouldn't ever feel a need to sin! But oh no, God had to give Adam a MEANS to act out. and OF COURSE the woman has to stir up trouble.
If you take the PoV that God always intended for mankind to have to spend it's live attoneing(sp?) (which is what most christians believe) then what in Gods name are we atoneing for?!? We didn't do anything wrong! God did! It was his or her plan for Adam in the first place!
I cannot satisfactorily come up with a view of Heaven that satisfies my mortal mind and I refuse to believe that God would create us "in his image" without the ability to experience and understand God him or herself and without the ability to understand God's gift to us in the afterlife. Why tell us about heaven but not give us the ability to appreciate what he is telling us?
It just doesn't make sense. Which is why I refuse to ASSUME there is something waiting for me after death. I am personally a huge fan of the notion of reincarnation, but I have no basis to believe this other than hope.
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