Yep. It’s very interesting to ponder.
I recently came up with two theories.
1. There was nothing special about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Rather, he told us not to eat of it and, when we did, we had knowledge of good and evil. We had disobeyed and we were ashamed. In the end, it was just another tree.
And I think of it like he’s dad, we’re a 12 year old, and the tree is the car. He tells us not to drive it, but we take the keys and take it for a spin. In the end, he was going to, when we were 16 and ready, give us the keys and give us the car, but we rushed it and smacked a tree joyriding.
Good, cuban leaf. Your Genesis analogy is thought provoking. A cat has no moral compass. It’s amused when it finds and kills a mouse, mole or baby rabbit. It’s a creature in the wild — the same as Adam and Eve were before before their “fall”.
You can look at the fall positively. We earned our freedom at that moment and our newly gained thought processes brought us both pain and joy.
Sure the 12 year old smacked the car into a tree. But he learned that he is his own master now and is responsible for what he does — both good and bad.