It might well be!
If you want to “love your gods”…stay simple. Do not learn things, because actually thinking may prevent you from accepting what “the gods” want you to accept.
“Obedience” is important to rulers…and what better way to exact obedience than to make the laws be the idea of gods rather than the rulers. All they are doing is to help enforce the will of the gods.
The Catholics are a good example, since they no longer believe in a literal Adam and Eve. The best I understand it is that the virtual Adam & Eve were the first humans with a moral sense, though what they did wrong I don’t get, and why people at least partially descended from others are sinners I also don’t get. It’s never made a lot of sense to me, but original sin doesn’t either. I grew up learning that we’re imperfect, we make mistakes, and once a year we atone and ask to be written in the book of life for the next year. If we aren’t, we die, end of story. No eternal torment, no delegation of salvation authority, no middle demigods.
FYI - I know this is a tangential thought but, Mormons believe Eden was in Missouri. 
I used to teach sunday school years ago and the question came up: Why is Satan smarted than God? I was appalled, I said,“Oh My why would you think such a thing” ?The reply was," If satan can make evil look good. why doesn’t God make good look more attractive?’ I had no answer! I used the old saying no one knows the mind of God and why he allows such things!
Now of course I realize that it is the words, sayings ,teaching, and beliefs of humans, and the spin they put on things.
The Book Of Mormon has an interesting take on this. It smacks of eastern religions and coming into a world where duality exists.
“They would have remained in a state of innocence, having no joy, for they knew no misery; doing no good, for they knew no sin. . . . Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy” (2 Nephi 2:23, 25)
I think there’s a passage in there about not being able to choose because they were unaware of good or evil.
If you’re in Eden, but have never known anything else, how good is it? I think a very significant part of the story is that they chose to have knowledge of good and evil even though it’s painted as God being pissed.
Adam still screws up the flow of information, though. God tells Adam, “don’t eat the fruit of this tree,” but Adam tells Eve, “don’t touch the tree”.
The theists I know are mormons. 
And their choice would be a lot more significant if they weren’t blithering idiots when they made it - in every portrayal of it I’ve heard it’s not portrayed as a deliberate choice to steal fire from the heavens, it’s that Eve got talked in circles by a snake and Adam went along for the ride. And as you note, there’s a pespectibe where only after they’d already eaten the fruit did they become cognitively capable of making a choice of this kind (what with it having been the fruit of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and all).
Epic Fail.
Cite for your parenthetic, BG? (Not intending argument – I’ve seen this asserted several times,but without evidence except from the same sort of sites that “prove” Hallowe’en is the work of Satan. So if you have a reliable discussion of pre-Hegira Meccan polytheism somewhere, it will be a huge help.
From what I have heard the Christian tale is a grossly perverted version of the original Gnostic tale of Sophia imparting knowledge onto humans. I know Christianity is supposedly derived from Christian Gnosticism, but I am not sure of all the specifics.
I am told that originally the snake wasn’t looked at as an evil and that neither was the tree. Also the God in the Christian story is actually the Demiurge in the Gnostic story.
Rather than tell you the story myself… which would be grossly inaccurate you can read this:
The serpent in this story is actually sent to give Adam and Eve that spark.
I’ve heard that the Romans destroyed a lot of texts which related Christianity to Gnosticism. but I think the parallels are clear enough.
I don’t know. It seems they could choose something without knowing what it is just as you or I could try something we have never experienced before.
Use some very confrontational, loaded phrases that suggest a bias that isn’t going to be dissuaded by any discussion, then claim to want a rational discussion. I’m not expecting any progress to be made here. But, there are some points to be made if you really are looking for a discussion.
Does your dog know the difference between good and evil? I’m guessing even the most irrational, confrontationalist just trying to goad theists isn’t going to say “yes, it does.” So, I’ll assume the answer is no.
Does your dog know not to pee on the carpet? Might be a bad example… Can a dog be taught not to pee in the house? Yes. Does the dog know it’s going to be punished if it does? Yes. Does the dog now know the difference between good and evil? Still no.
But, your view of the bible story takes an irrational view that if the dog doesn’t know good and evil, it can’t possibly be taught not to pee on the carpet. ridiculous.
Once again, appears to be using the most literal, confrontational irrational interpretation.
Because it does look like it.
Any human being with a good grasp of language can understand that humans use certain non-literal phrases like, “in the day you eat there of,” and know that the consequence doesn’t have to happen “on that day,” that the consequence is set at the time of infraction; that the outcome is certain, you aren’t going to get around it. Assuming otherwise is very literalist, and doesn’t seem to be a rational argument, or one invoked by someone looking for a rational discussion.
(edit: Apparently theists went 5000 years or so, knowing that Adam and Eve didn’t die that day, and didn’t realizing that this was a “fatal flaw” that no one ever noticed before you came along. It isn’t a fatal flaw, and your accepting no other interpretation doesn’t make it one.)
The simple explanation of this is that someone who chooses this god doesn’t see the depiction in the old testament as being evil. That should be clear. So, a question more like, “why don’t you see this as brutal, vengeful, barbaric,” would be less confrontational, and more in line with seeking a rational discussion.
But, you have decreed that this god is brutal, vengeful, barbaric. That no one could reasonably chose this as their loving god. what the hell were they thinking? And then claim to be seeking a rational discussion. You have basically declared that you are correct and there is no rational discourse possible. Of course no one is going to “debate” with you. There would be no point. It’s not going to be a debate. Your statements make it clear you will continue to spout the same rhetoric whatever anyone says.
I’m not going to say that this is a description of what you would do…
But, I have previously tried to tell people, (who started with similar arguments,) that “on the day you eat of it” is a non-literal phrase, and had them try to brow beat me into accepting a literal view that they seem to need me to have to be able to dismiss my viewpoint.
Some of the bible can be taken as history. Some is morality tales. This one was written long after the fact by someone who wasn’t there.
It seems to me that this tale is partly a description of the difference between sentience and instinct, a contrast between the hunter/gatherer lifestyle we used to live and the farmers we became. Possibly even to explain the difference between us and other species of human that we came into contact with in times past. (that last bit applies more to other parts of the Genesis story…)
I see no reason to delve deeper into the morality aspects, or what it might say about god with you yet, since as much as you claim to want discourse, your interpretation of the story demands a strict view of human phrases that defies logic and accepts no other view.
I always figured that Adam and Eve’s mistake wasn’t eating the fruit of the tree but lying to God when asked about it. Because you know the Big Guy knew exactly what happened and Adam just lies to him to his face? Smooth move, ex-lax.
Sure, but the decision was about as uninformed of one as a person could get without tripping on a rock and landing mouth-first on the fruit. Eve clearly was cajoled and arguably lied into the choice she made, and certainly didn’t fully understand the implications of it. And Adam clearly only chose to eat the fruit because Eve had. So I can’t see this as a conscious choice on their part to partake of knowledge - not as the story is written, anyway.
To put it in terms of trying something new, it’s less like deliberately trying some exotic new spice to see if you like it, than to having somebody offer it to you telling you it’s salt.
It’s an interesting analogy, but there is a couple small differences:
God created man, and thus actually programmed in (and therefore possessing a deeper understanding of) how humans would react to the various scenarios we (might) find ourselves in.
He put the tree in the garden. In other words, he actually provided the only (as stated to Adam) means to “fail” and fall out of his good graces.
Your average dog owner did not have a hand in designing the dog, but is merely trying to adapt (train) the dog to a slightly “other than natural” role. When a dog pees on a carpet, it is not altogether surprising (or, at least, out of bounds from the nature of dogs), and thus most people would agree that “eternal torment” would be a somewhat over the top punishment for that transgression.
I have been pondering the Garden of Eden story, as well. The bare bones story in the Bible almost comes across as if humans were “punished”, or “cursed”, with mortality and disease (which wasn’t originally in the Garden) for being (predictably) human.
Maybe that was this The Plan all along? God could have made us dumb pets… but he has other things in mind for us. 
Dumb pets punished with the curse of mortality and disease?
I prefer to think of it as a choice rather than a punishment or banishment.
as in
BTW, if you choose to gain a knowledge of good and evil {duality} you’ll no longer be in paradise but have to deal with the consequences of that choice.
It’s pretty clear in the text that they didn’t understand the consequences going in- making it logically impossible for them to have meaningfully ‘chosen’ them. If I place an apple and simply tell you not to eat it, and then when you do I bludgeon you half to death with a hammer with no prior warning that that would happen, you did not choose to get bludgeoned with the hammer.
Having had no experience or understanding of good and evil of course they couldn’t make a meaningful choice. As I said before. We choose to experience things we’ve never experienced before. It’s not impossible to choose that.
The choice, as I see it, was to experience duality, and even mortality,
I assume at this point Adam has no concept of death. “Die? What’s that? Is it bad?” Here’s an interesting part
become like one of us? Who’s us?
So, once they decided they wanted to know good and evil, concepts alien to them before hand, there were consequences. It’s like decided to experience skydiving for the first time. Once you jump out of the plane it’s too late to say “Holy Shit this is scary, I wanna go back and not do this”
just to touch on the Book of Mormon theology on this subject
I’ve always thought it was an interesting theology. I have to wonder where Smith and his early cohorts got this stuff. If I believed their story of an angel and golden plates I’d be some kind of Moroni. HA! I slay me.
I never claimed that God wouldn’t have known what humans were likely to do. I was just objecting to the assertion that humans could have no conception that punishment was imminent without the knowledge of good and evil.
And does it say anything about eternal torment with no chance of redemption? That would be a really bleak scenario. There’s no chance? We’re doomed forever for this? (Aside from the issue of whether this is allegory rather than literal fact,) I’m more with cosmosdan and the idea of natural consequences of choosing for yourself.
I also believe this, and that’s why it doesn’t bother me that it looks like a set up. So, what? He set us up to make us something more than we would have been otherwise? Who on earth do you appeal to when your diety sets you up for your benefit? We didn’t deserve this type of treatment.