What does Satan represent?

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If Adam didn't have the capacity to doubt, he'd be less perfect. We agree that doubt CAN be a good thing. Doubt is NOT a good thing if you're already on the right track.

Doubt has the capacity of causing a person to second-guess himself and knowledgeable authority at the most critical of times. There can be no innovation if the potential innovator is dead.

You celebrate his enterprise because you are under the mistaken assumption that man's wisdom surpasses God's. God may make a perfect creature equal with him, but the creation can never be greater than the Creator.

There is no way to know you are on the right track. Doubt gives you the way to attempt to be surer, but experience in living is at best asymptotic to truth. Religion offers truth on a platter and that platter has been demonstrated to be poisonous many, many times. It's better to prepare your own meals and be aware of their inherent incapabilities. Doubt is the doorway to the unknown. If there is a God (which seems to me to be doubtful) He gave humanity it's greatest gift which is doubt. That forbidden Apple was not placed lightly in the Garden. It was given for mankind to free itself from the domination of irrational subservience and it seems to have served it's purpose. If there is a God He is cleverer than you think.

According to rabbinic tradition, the fruit that Eve plucked from the tree was NOT an apple. It was either a date or a fig.

ruveyn

If you accept that the story was an actual event you can give a fig for or have a date with Eve. Otherwise it might as well have been an apple, a pear, an orange or, to get Freudian, a banana.

False assumption. Doubt is only useful in a world in which there are reasons to even have doubt. A woman may have walked a million times through an alley during daylight hours and have been perfectly safe. This is ideal. But who is to say that drug dealers/addicts, pimps, depraved drunk rapists, or even human traffickers aren't lurking in the shadows in the deepest, darkest hours of night? It COULD be that the alley is no less safe, but given the possibilities that alley potentially poses a greater threat.

On the other hand, if you are the only sentient being in an idyllic, ideal paradise, there is not need to assume that there even CAN be any danger. This was Adam's condition. God only revealed ONE danger. That was all. What reason did Adam have to doubt God? None. None, whatsoever. God's creation in Adam would not be perfect or human without the capacity for willing obedience. The unfortunate consequence is that the creation also has the ability to disobey. This isn't a fault--it is HUMAN.

The perfect human is still a human and the sum of all that a human is--curiosity, critical thinking, and so on. God's boundary of knowledge placed upon the perfect human is such that the human only need trust God, negating the need for a human creature to also be omniscient. The most prominent feature of the PERFECT human is that he is born without a sinful nature when, just as with God, he has the ability to do that which is evil and yet chooses to do good. All Satan did was ask a few Columbo-esque questions (in a manner of speaking) and point out apparent contradictions/inconsistencies in God's commands. Adan erred in assuming that the serpent was correct, and it APPEARED so.

This isn't far from what we do in our present-day context. We assume that God is wrong despite God's omniscience. Would you walk into an elementary math class assuming your math teacher is wrong? Of course not! You learn what you're there to learn and, to a degree, you MUST trust the teacher's authority. Now what you DO with that knowledge is a different story. But that doesn't change the fact that you know that 2+2=4, and so on.

Now, an imperfect human teacher is still an imperfect human and is bound by what he or she knows. Adam is blameless and incapable of sinning UNTIL he chooses to.

Speaking of doubts and so forth, I came across this in my reading, found in James 1: Now if any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives to all generously and without criticizing, and it will be given him. But let him ask in faith without doubting. For the doubter is like the surging sea, driven and tossed by the wind. That person should not expect to receive anything from the lord. An indecisive man is unstable in all his ways. Blessed is a man who endures trials, because when he passes the test he will receive the crown of life that He has promised to those who love Him.

More relevant to what we're discussing regarding Adam: No one undergoing a trial should say, "I am being tempted by God." For God is not tempted by evil, and He Himself doesn't tempt anyone. But each person is tempted when he is drawn away and enticed by his own evil desires. Then after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and when sin is fully grown, it gives birth to death.

So what that means for us is that sin was not born out of taking the fruit--taking the fruit is the sin itself. Taking the fruit was what was forbidden. The sin originated, though, in the desire of Adam for it. Here's the actual passage form Genesis 3: Then the woman saw that the tree was good for food and delightful to look at, and that it was desirable for obtaining wisdom. So she took some of its fruit and ate it; she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate it.

The pattern we establish here is Eve's desire for the fruit, and we must assume the same pattern for Adam--the pattern of desire and temptation. They knew perfectly well God's presence in the garden. Nothing prohibited them from seeking God's wisdom. The fall of man never HAD to happen. There was no deep lesson of overcoming doubt and adversary. The only lesson we can learn is that God is perfect in power and wisdom and has provided a way for man to overcome his sinful nature by allowing God to work through him. By placing our trust completely in God, we bring heaven to earth and return to the garden. We may take the fruit of the Tree of life and in the spiritual sense live forever.

Danger does not only originate with dangerous people. There are many kinds of doubts that are necessary to stay alive and healthy which originate in innumerable ways - unstable soil, polluted water, storms and earthquakes etc., etc. And doubts are an essential element in basic reasoning and creative activity. That God should have the perverse concept that wisdom was undesirable and did not so make it for Adam and Eve was a fault in his construction of the humans. To create something both desirable and forbidden was a strange and possibly sadistic trap and that the trap was sprung was directly the responsibility of God.

There is a semi-amusing move -The Devil's Advocate- starring Keano Reeves and Al Pacino. Listen to what Al Pacino (as Satan/John Milton) has to say about God. You will find it rather familiar.

Here is a sample:
John Milton: Let me give you a little inside information about God. God likes to watch. He's a prankster. Think about it. He gives man instincts. He gives you this extraordinary gift, and then what does He do, I swear for His own amusement, his own private, cosmic gag reel, He sets the rules in opposition. It's the goof of all time. Look but don't touch. Touch, but don't taste. Taste, don't swallow. Ahaha. And while you're jumpin' from one foot to the next, what is he doing? He's laughin' His sick, f****n' ass off! He's a tight-ass! He's a SADIST! He's an absentee landlord! Worship that? NEVER!

ruveyn

Danger only exists if you assume an imperfect world. There is no need to assume that the garden of Eden featured natural dangers. Doubts are an essential element in basic reasoning and creative activity in our world as it presently exists. Of that there is no doubt. But there is no reason at all to assume that the same principle applied to the state of the world in which Adam and Eve lived. God gave all the wisdom Adam and Eve needed for their age and state of being: Don't eat from THAT tree. God didn't create a trap. It's the serpent who was responsible for setting the trap and enticing Adam and Eve to fall into it. I think that Adam and Eve's mistake was convincing themselves that the wisdom God gave them in a perfect state was insufficient, that somehow they could aspire to be greater than God or even gods themselves. We fall for the same trap when we say we do not need to ask God for wisdom or fail to consult what wisdom God has provided for us.

You still don't grasp the basics. What you consider the ideal life is to be the dumb pet animal of a superior being. If some sort of super being invaded Earth you would rush to be it's slave and kiss its ass. That's basically what Adam seemed to be designed for and he finally more or less decided to be his own man. I don't want to be something's domesticated animal no matter how superior it may be. I take my own life in my own hands and do with it whatever comes my way. I despise slavery and that's what you're slavering after. No thanks.

Who says Adam is a dumb pet?

He's confined to a garden and to the absolute whims of a superior being whether or not they make sense to him. He's no more than a chimp in a zoo. There's a whole new world out there to explore and find out about. What else would you call it?

What is amazing to me is that an apparently bright guy such as yourself is totally unaware of the realities of existence, of the fact that matter and energy and all the forces that have created life on this planet have done so in an intricate web of dangers and safeties that are an inherent part of its structure. All living things are designed to encounter and deal with the massive dangers of merely being alive and reproducing. You have no deep perception of the basic way the universe functions and keep referring to nonsensical fantasies of a perfectly safe world. It is basic to the structure of life itself that in it each element of life both combats and inflicts dangers on all other life. That's the way life functions and changes and simply manages to stay alive. Doubt and danger and creativity and reason are all part of the same package and it is tightly bundled. That's what life is all about, not some sugar coated children's fairy tale of perfect calm and safety. It's the struggle that makes life worth living.

Apparently, people in Eden don't die even if they fall down a cliff. They don't 'need' understand any more than a cat does (even a cat knows many things are not eatable). That is the absurd fairy world you guys are arguing about.