The Garden of Eden

I was pondering the other day and thought I'd capture the ponderance...



I was thinking about the Garden of Eden and if death occurred there.  I find it hard to believe that all of creation was undying and everlasting prior to Adam and Eve mucking it up.  And even if it were, why punish all of creation just because of a couple of dumb humans?  So my premise is that nature was as it is today in the Garden of Eden... the natural order of renewal and death already established and that Adam and Eve were a part of it.



So what really happened with the Tree of Knowledge?  It couldn't have just been about sex--at least not entirely.  What I thought of in my ponderance wasn't carnal knowledge but simply the knowledge of life and death.  Prior to this awareness, Adam & Eve only knew that life "was" and that the Sun rose and set.  Living in complete harmony in a system designed to be perpetual.  Certainly the cycle of life went on all around them.  Perhaps God kept them from being part of the food chain, perhaps not.  Is the deer constantly fearful of being eaten by the lion?  Or does it just *live* in its moment of food, sleep, mating and raising offspring.  The moment of death would be fearful for certain, but is the deer aware of this?  Is not knowing something of a blessing?



To follow this thought to the end, I would think that the Tree of Knowledge made Adam and Eve aware of the cycle and then somehow made them seem not a part of it.  The very thoughts we have of being external to nature and not part of the cycle are our gated buttresses keeping us out of the Garden today... I think the knowledge Adam and Eve discovered was self awareness and the perception of our own deaths.