What was the purpose of the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil

[Thudlow_Boink]

I think that’s essentially the same point that @Alan_Smithee was making here:

How were Adam & Eve supposed to know it was wrong to eat the fruit?

Now that’s done, I can join the wild speculation of the rest of the thread. The big question for me is why that tree was there to begin with. I see the story as an etiological myth explaining loss of innocence and (if it’s not too anachronistic) our existential “thrown-ness” in the world–that unlike every other creature, we seem unaware of our purpose and at odds with our surroundings and ourselves. (Remember the immediate consequences of the Fall: pain in working for food and in giving birth,…

That whole thread has some good stuff, but the specific post I linked to is particularly good and particularly relevant to this question.