I forgot to add that yes there are things I wish I didn’t know. But I also feel that evil should be acknowledged and faced with eyes wide open and moral judgement must be pronounced against it. I believe that the only true sin is the refusal to think.
Habakkuk says God is of purer eyes then to behold evil. Yet Job offers us God interacting with the Accuser. So we have a problem. CAN God NOT know the evil one -- better than he knows himself?
It seems to me that one way Adam and Eve came to know evil was by experience and commission. That certainly is one sort of knowledge but maybe not the best or fullest sort.
I certainly encounter among the gentiles those who "know" guilt, because, though they may deny it and in some ways be unaware of it, they ARE guilty and they know it. But they know it without hope. To me that suggests that their knowledge is incomplete. They do not know themselves in the light of the redemption wrought by God in Christ. Nor do they really know evil in the context and fuller light provided to those who have turned themselves over to God.
A "bad guy" may "know" with intimacy the back alleys and filth of the urban combat zone where he works, but does he understand them, their being and meaning, as well as the angels or even a halfway decent social worker?
Put it another way: When I am asleep, in one way I know sleep best of all. But I do not know sleep as well as a sleep scientist, who not only sleeps but when he is awake he inquires deeply into what sleep is.
Waking understands both sleeping and waking. Sleeping understands neither. Holiness understands profanity better than profanity understands holiness.
Heck! If all the music I hear is rap and hip-hop, I may distinguish between good and not so good rap and hip-hop. But if my ears are ever opened to hear Bach, then, I think I can know more about rap and hip-hop than I did when they were all I knew.
The knowledge the serpent offered was knowledge that hampers knowing.
As to the inclination to evil and freedom -- and pardon the sexism: Suppose two women are before me, one a ravaged meth whore who will tolerate me if I will allow her to devour my money in her addiction, the other a lovely, wise, virtuous, and pious woman who loves me with the spousal love that seeks my good and the good of the relationship.
If I have ANY inclination toward the junkie, it seems to me it must be because I neither see nor understand what she is. Therefore my inclination arises from an unknowing will lacking in understanding. Such a will is not free.
But the clearer my vision and the deeper my understanding, the more I will be drawn by the good and beautiful woman and the more I will give consent to that attraction. In this case, appetite and reason work together to help me see and choose the good. I can entertain, as a mere proposition, the idea of pursuing the junkie, but it does not draw me, BECAUSE my will is so free it no longer can be drawn by evil.
All this is to reflect on what it might mean to "know good and evil" and to be free.