Adam, Eve and the Forbidden Fruit

When I read the news that Dr. Craig Venter with his team of twenty four researchers  has been able to create artificial genome or self replicating cells after more than fifteen years of research , it reminded me of the religious myth of Adam and Eve, who were warned of the forbidden fruit, also called the fruit of knowledge that would bring misery upon them, but their curiosity took the better of them making them relent to the enticement to taste the fruit. The knowledge they gained from eating the fruit made them learn what unhappiness means. 

Why God prevented Adam and Eve from gaining knowledge and why did they disobey God? These are the questions I am trying to answer:

"Adam and Eve" is the bipolar concept of the world and the harmony between them is the crux of the existence of the world. The ultimate truth therefore in harmonious existence is to be aware of "True Knowledge", in other words, wise use of knowledge. The wisdom of true knowledge is imperative for harmonious existence and unscrupulous use of knowledge disturbs harmony of bipolar existence, thus leading to unhappiness and causing imbalance in existential harmony.  

Therefore, it is pertinent to have the wisdom to use knowledge in maintaining the existential harmony.  

The answer to how we gain wisdom from religious point of view is through the spiritual aspect of the religion and not the material practice of religious dogmas and rituals. Through spirituality we can appreciate and understand all that is around us that we are an integral part of and this helps us to inquire about the unknown as an extension of what we know. This also means learning through association and not dissociation, because when we try to find out about the unknown to "acquire" knowledge then we alienate it from the absolute whole it is part of ignoring the very essence of its existence and try to develop our knowledge of it on our preconceived ideas and notions. This only encourages us to replicate it artificially, rather than understand and appreciate its natural existence as an integral part of very nature, the macrocosm. This process of dissociated learning has added to human plastic or artificial knowledge that only reflects our desire to master nature and the macrocosm and not to to accentuate our awareness of its integrity by associating ourselves with it. 

So, God prevented Adam and Eve from gaining knowledge without the wisdom of appreciating it. Knowledge without wisdom culminates to existential imbalance therefore disturbing the natural harmony. What we mean by disobeying God is acquiring knowledge through dissociation and this is an act of defying nature, the macrocosm and trying to master what we are a part of. 


This is the question that society at large is asking after learning about the human feat of creating artificial genome. Will this not lead to biological warfare? Will this not lead to unethical practices of genetic engineering? How can we prevent the misuse of such material knowledge in the vested interest of powerful few?