Does God have the answers to everthing? Could God think of a question that God couldn't answer?
This was addressed on the first page. God cannot defy his own nature.
EDIT: So the answer is no.
God told Adam not to eat the fruit. The sin that he committed was disobedience. Through this initial act he became aware of sin and separated himself from God.
Wrong. Sorry just plain wrong.
Until he eats the fruit he has no basis on which to make a moral decision, as far as he's concerned any action is good, the same for Eve.
When the Devil tempts them with the apple, how are they possibly to make an informed choice? God says 'don't eat the fruit or you'll die.' and they accept this as absolute fact because they're incorruptible, if they don't know what a lie is, how can they identify one?
Whe the Devil says: "You will not die for God knows that when you eat it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." They absolutely believe him, again, why shouldn't they? As far as they're concerned everything which is spoken is a truth. They also don't know at this point that disobeying holy orders is wrong.
Sin had been committed before when Satan separated himself from God. He introduced the idea of disobedience into the world by persuading Adam and Eve to eat the forbidden fruit. I was off when I said that Adam and Eve had no concept of right and wrong, but their understanding of it only went so far as how it related to the fruit. That was the only way that sin could enter into the world, and they took the bait. Therefore, when the Devil told them to eat the fruit they knew that they were going against God's command.
That's like asking "why is God big". It is part of his nature.
If it is God's nature to be good, wouldn't raping innocents be good if God commands us to do so? If God commands that raping innocents is bad because he is good, then it is reasonable to say that he knows raping innocents is bad before he gives such command. This implies that there must be a separate standard of goodness (raping innocents is bad). If this is the case, why do we need God to determine what is good or bad?
It would be good, but at the same time because some of God's nature is reflected in us, raping innocents would
probably seem good to us as well. I reject the idea that many Christians have that atheists or people who belong to other faiths are not able to make moral decisions. Laws reflect our values, our values reflect how we believe society can function the best. Having a law against stealing is perfectly rational because though it would be in my interest to steal from you (if there was no law), it would be more-so in my interest to support a law against stealing, because I have more to gain from it (or perhaps, less to lose).
Many of the commands in the Bible against murder, stealing, and yes, rape, make perfect sense because they are bad for society. I am arguing that God knows not just that which human intuition and reason tell us, but that the standards he describes for humans to live by go beyond our limited perspective and present goodness in its fullest form.
The example of rape is a very poor one (and in bad taste), since all rational humans and the Bible can agree that it is bad. A better example would be putting cream in our coffee, since the Bible says nothing about it. Let's assume that it did say that putting cream in coffee was a sin. Obviously, human intuition doesn't understand why this would be so, but from a Christian perspective it would make sense to believe that society would be better off not putting cream in its coffee. I'm not asking you to agree with what I'm saying here about Christian morality, just understand where we come from and what our ideas are based on.