Evil

Looking at Adam and Eve as a case study. If Eve consumed the fruit without knowledge and understanding the notion of obedience, how then do we define original evil? Is evil an entity that in paradise was separate from humankind? Or does evil stem from the choices we make, regardless of whether we have the knowledge of right and wrong? If the serpent is seen as an the personification of evil that lingered on from primordial chaos, could the serpent not have tempted Adam and Eve to sin in other ways apart from consuming the forbidden fruit?

Simple enough, one might think. They lived in innocence before the fall, with no concept of right and wrong or good and evil. They only sinned when they disobeyed God's one single commandment! Let's reconsider that. Since innocence and ignorance absolved them from guilt in the garden, wouldn't innocence have then absolved them from the sin of lust(for the fruit) as well? After all, the concept of obedience can only be understood when placed next to the notion of disobedience, and disobedience did not exist, intellectually as a sin, for they were ignorant of good and evil as they had not consumed of the fruit. One can only exist with the coexistence or absence but foreknowledge of the other. True goodness only exists with the knowledge of evil, darkness only exists in the absence of light, obedience is only obedience when there is the deliberate denial of disobedience.

What then, if we view the serpent as an externalisation of our implicit desires, instead of the temptress and the instigator of evil? Is there then a way to give ourselves an explanation that might allow us to have a clearer picture of what sin truly is?

Consider.