3:22 And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:
3:23 Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.
3:24 So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.
It's details like this which sometimes make me wish I believed, because God is so often written as a villain being set up to be defeated.
Edit: If only we had a hero like Prometheus, to steal the fruit as he stole the secret of fire.
Look at it this way: If God had truly wanted Adam and Eve not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge, why did He put it there in the first place?
Maybe it was a test, and they actually passed, proving humanity was ready for the trials to come. A non-benevolent God who just wants an interesting world full of suffering and heroism is possible.
Re: faith
I think origamiscienceguy was making the point that all statements have to be taken on faith, because we're never 100% sure of anything at all. Even though it takes very little faith to be confident your chair won't collapse. I don't know if that's the same thing, though. Trusting in my chair is an unconscious action I don't waste time thinking about (well, until now
). Maybe I'm aware of the risk, but it's so slight that considering it is a waste of time. Because if we doubt everything we observe, as we theoretically should, we become lost in ineffectual sophistry.
It might not be faith, just efficient ignorance of far-out possibilities. Semantics, maybe, but it's also semantics to equate "I believe my chair won't break" to "I believe our loving God flooded the world and only one family remained, along with two of every animal, in a boat". At best, the scales are wildly different. (As for that specific example, I know most Christians today consider the flood story to be allegorical or incomplete)
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