I used to think, and even say, that:

"If I knew back then what I know now, I would not again do the faithless and asinine sinful mistakes I committed in my former ignorance."

Recently, however, I am not so sure.

Don't get me wrong. I am not morphing into an unbeliever, or - worse yet - a God-hater.

So, what do I now have in mind?

A simple addition to my previous premise explains it:

"If I knew back then what I know now, and was not confined inside an environment of overall evil duress and wicked temptations as I was, I would not have done nor now do the sinful mistakes I committed back then.

Scripture informs me (and also us - being that I am no different that you and you no different than me pertaining to you also being a red-blooded human and, like me, admittedly read and both conceptually and identically understand the same orderly combinations of English alphabet lettering comprising comprehensible English words I comprehend), that:

Genesis 1:31 And God saw everything that He had made, and hey, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, a sixth day. [The word "day" in Hebrew is yom, and when combined with an ordinal number such as "first" and "second" and so on, and when followed by the Hebrew idiomatic phrase: "...there was evening and there was morning..." such always and only means a 24-Earth-hour period of time, with or without the Sun around].

So all was "good."

Almost.

Almost? For the most part?

Was the creation of Lucifer-turned-Satan yet to come, or already existing, "good" [which statement God is said (by the author of Genesis) to have said, according to that recorded Genesis 1:31 statement of universal "goodness?"]

The first chapter of Genesis does not, of course and significantly, mention anything about the creation of either The [Damnable] Tempting Serpent nor The [Dangerous-and-Eventually-Lethal] Tree of The Knowledge of Good and Evil.

Maybe both had not yet been created by the end of Genesis chapter one, or God was describing the whole thing broadly and overall in general terms, and/or only became a reality later on in the developing chronological progression mentioned in Genesis chapter two thereafter.

Whatever the case, it is difficult (if not impossible) for me to classify the existence of The Tempting Serpent and the existence of The Tree of The Knowledge of Good and Evil as: "good."

Maybe the Lucifer who would become The Tempting Serpent had not yet used his free will to become tempting at the time the LORD made that "all is good" statement of His in Genesis chapter one.

Eve plainly did not live in a "perfect" environment within The Garden of Eden. She instead innocently moved her then-totally-naked body around inside a diabolical-timebomb minefield of horrible and horrifying potential evil which ultimately would become fatal against her - and her offspring ever since (of which I also am a pathetically-misfortunate sample).

ALL was not "good."

It is assumed that neither Eve nor Adam intrinsically and initially had a vicious, hostile, rebellious, defiant, aversive, antagonism against their Creator from the start, which apparently-never-once-praised-by-primal-parents Creator had provisionally placed them in such a pleasant and privileged Garden with enough edible good food, drink, life-form entertainment, and consistently-temperate weather.

It can also be assumed that yours truly also has not, nor has any of the other righteous saints, innately been God-despisers from the start, since the never-once-recorded-as-being-penitent-nor-confessional primal pair started off:

Romans 7:22 For I delight in the law of God, in my inmost self . . .
Second Corinthians 5:9 So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please Him.
First Thessalonians 4:1 Finally, brothers, we beg and implore you in the Lord Jesus, that as you learned from us how you ought to live and to please God, just as you are doing, you do so more and more.
First John 4:16 So we know and believe the love God has for us. God is love, and he/she who resides in love resides in God, and God resides in him (or her).

Lamentably, we have essentially been, are now, and probably will continue to be forced to be entrapped within a surroundings rife and reeking with encountered and confrontational temptation(s) we did not solicit, we did not ask for, which did not have our prior permission to approach us nor tantalize or titillate us, which we did not want, but which was first imposed against us indirectly by our Creator (that is, by His created and despicable Stumbling Blocks of The Tempting Serpent and The Tree of The Knowledge of Good and Evil), which Creator allowed part of His own creation (e.g. The Serpent and The Tree) to directly facilitate plus aid-and-abet our fall into sin.

Is the LORD at fault for that?

IF so, can the LORD also be blamed for having given us made-in-the-image-of-God sentience to perceive what is "moral" and "immoral" -- unlike instincts-only-driven lower lifeforms not with the capacity to detect "right" and "wrong" -- and (beyond that) inflicted or encumbered us with dicey-and-even-treacherous free will to decide to obey or instead disobey, either stay straight or screw up . . . consequently causing us, by default, to be responsible and come under judgment for how we humans respond to a plethora of simultaneous environmental stimuli?

Holy Writ seems to strangely describe the accursed Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil from Eve's carnal, limited, and temptable point of view:

Genesis 3:6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, and he ate.

However, it is difficult to describe certain oxymoronic phenomena with the English language. Two examples:

1 =

Luke 7:15 And the dead man sat up, and began to speak. And He gave him to his mother.
John 11:44 The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with bandages, and his face wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, "Unbind him, and let him go."

[How else can a person who was dead but now is living be described?]

2 =

Revelation 13:3 One of his heads seemed to have a mortal wound, but his mortal wound was healed, and the whole earth followed The Beast with wonder.
Revelation 13:12 He exercises all the authority of The First Beast in his presence, and makes earth inhabitants worship The First Beast, whose mortal wound was healed.

[If the wound was mortal, how could it become un-moral, or healed - by whoever for whatever?

"Emblem of man elate above death," with one International Satanic "flag above all the rest" (to quote poetic words from Ralph Waldo Emerson, used by Ralph Vaughn Williams in his pre-Titanic-tragedy Sea Symphony)?

Hardly.

The Resurrected Jesus Christ, who is The true Son of God and Son of Man, is the Ultimate "Emblem of man elated above death" . . . and The Christian Flag is "above all the rest," as a "token of all brave sailors" and "noble inventors" in the great eternal-destiny "similitude that always has and does and will span all" (to continue quoting Emerson's poem).]

The Forbidden Fruit might indeed have been a pretty and cute "delight to her eyes," but in fact the Tree's fruit was quite poisonous, even though its fatal poison had a somewhat-delayed reaction. Eve did not drop dead on the spot (sort of predicted by The Tempter), but it took a while for the immediate deterioration of her newly-AWOL DNA to culminate in the full and final mortal effect of her complete life-function termination, leaving her a hideous and worthless, lifeless and soul-less corpse.

So the Bible author questionably describes the Tree with the debatable semantics: "desired to make one wise?"

Wise, huh?

There are obviously different types of "wisdom" used for different purposes:

First Kings 2:9 Now therefore hold him not guiltless, for you are a wise man; you will know what you ought to do to him, and you shall bring his gray head down with blood to Sheol."

Recollect:

Job 5:13 He takes the wise in their own craftiness; and the schemes of the wily are brought to a quick end.
Job 37:24 Therefore men [and women] fear Him; He does not regard any who are wise in their own conceit.
Psalm 49:10 Yes, he shall see that even the wise die, the fool and the stupid alike must perish and leave their wealth to others.
Proverbs 18:15 An intelligent mind acquires knowledge, and the ear of the wise seeks knowledge.
Proverbs 24:5 A wise human is mightier than a strong human, and a man/woman of knowledge than he/she who has strength.

Ecclesiastes 2:15 Then I said to myself, "What befalls the fool will befall me also; why then have I been so very wise?" And I said to myself that this also is vanity.

Ecclesiastes 7:16 Be not righteous overmuch, and do not make yourself overwise; why should you destroy yourself?
Ecclesiastes 7:17 Be not wicked overmuch, neither be a fool; why should you die before your time?
Ecclesiastes 7:18 It is good that you should take hold of this, and from that withhold not your hand; for he/she who fears God shall come forth from them all.

Ecclesiastes 10:2 A wise man's heart inclines him toward the right, but a fool's heart toward the left.

Jeremiah 18:18 Then they said, "Come, let us make plots against Jeremiah, for the law shall not perish from the priest, nor counsel from the wise, nor the word from the prophet. Come, let us smite him with the tongue, and let us not heed any of his words."
Daniel 5:15 Now the wise men, the enchanters, have been brought in before me to read this writing and make known to me its interpretation; but they could not show the interpretation of the matter.
Obadiah 1:8 "Will I not on that day," says the LORD, "destroy the wise men out of Edom, and understanding out of Mount Esau?"
Romans 11:25 Lest you be wise in your own conceits, I want you to understand this mystery, brethren: a hardening has come upon part of Israel, until the full number of the Gentiles come in...

First Corinthians 1:19 For it is written, "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the cleverness of the clever I will thwart."
First Corinthians 1:20 Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?

The temptation against Eve to succumb was too great, overwhelming the non-mistakable threat God (perhaps indirectly, through her husband Adam) had probably given to her also.

It is not recorded in the Bible how much (if any) of a singular or multiple-session extensive and detailed or exhaustive briefing God previously had given to Eve (or even Adam, for that matter) about the dire and far-reaching consequences of her "doing something different for a change" by taking her first bite out of the slowly-but-definitely-and-finally-lethal poisonous Forbidden Fruit. One wonders how much He actually needed to do that, and if it would have been effective in her perpetually deciding to never try it out. Blatantly missing in the record of Genesis is the mention of any idiot-proof protective measures God could have employed or utilized (e.g. snarling attack dogs, electric razor-wire fences, big flashing neon Danger! signs, high-pitched noise generators, etc.) to prevent The Tragedy from ever occurring. And would even that have done any good against (not "for") "inquiring minds who want to know" overcome with an insatiable curiosity causing them to unwittingly destroy themselves?

We fallible human creatures, born into sin as fish born into and swimming around all their lives within a hopelessly-polluted lake, have no different motivation to err than Eve our inferior-gender familial ancestor, and also give in to Satan's suggested half-lies (not "half-truths"): "The temptation is too much. I have to get relief right now." "Can't wait, because I never know when God will provide prompt-enough and adequate-enough relief for me." "Just this once; it won't hurt." "Nobody will ever know what we do." "We'll get away with it; we got it all figured out." "We too fast for them." "We just gotta know if it's that bad right now." "Maybe they've changed, so let's find out." "We have to investigate now to discover." "How will we ever know if we don't go and explore it ourselves?"

Clearly, the Creator did what He did, even though He could have made us non-aware-of-morality robots (having either animate or inanimate components or some hybrid bionic-wonder combo) -- knowing full well beforehand [in His mysterious foreknowledge] that we free-willed humans would eventually cave under temptational pressure and weakly give in under enough and relentless non-solicited and non-asked-for wicked duress.

Understandably, and fortunately, the Creator already had in mind a Wonderful Contingency Plan involving His Only Begotten Son, named Jesus (the Atoning Redeemer), and a salvation-gospel plan of fully-adequate remedy related to and dependent upon such Sanctifier, involving our humble simple belief (with substantive credible works following) in the sufficiency of His sacrificial redemption and reconciliation as our One-And-Only Ticket into Heaven with Him and His holy whoevers and sacred-and-pure whatevers "to the ages of the ages."

But the same Scripture which both remarkably and faithfully records enough of the sordid and deplorable history of fallible humanity in the past thus has the authority and believability in predicting fully-forgiven rectification prophesied in the future, and the all-temptations-forever-removed anti-temptations means to accomplish and fulfill such:

Matthew 13:41 The Son of Man will send His angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers,
Matthew 13:42 and throw them into the furnace of fire; there men/women will weep and gnash their teeth.
Matthew 13:43 Then the righteous will shine like the Sun in the kingdom of their Father. He/She who has ears, let him-or-her hear.
Matthew 25:30 And throw the worthless servant into The Outer Darkness; there men/women will weep and gnash their teeth.'

Revelation 20:10 and The Devil who had deceived them was thrown into The Lake of Fire and Sulphur where The Beast and The False Prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night [continuously] forever.
Revelation 20:14 Then [the angel/demon? of] Death and [angel/demon? of] Hades were thrown into The Lake of Fire. This is The Second Death, The Lake of Fire;
Revelation 20:15 and if any one's name was not found written in The Book of Life, he/she was thrown into The Lake of Fire.
Revelation 21:27 But nothing unclean shall enter [the New Jerusalem], nor any one who practices abomination or falsehood, but only those who are written in the Lamb's book of life.

What?

No more Tempting Serpent? No more NIV-type heretics who mis-translate First Corinthians 7:1 and First Timothy 5:14 [and therefore promote postponing or avoiding marriage and then of necessity instead support fornication and harlotry]?

No more dogmatic wimpish heretics espousing cowardice-based avoid-death-and-persecution pre-Trib RapCrap?

No more exhibitionist and sexist feminist female humans causing besieged hapless-victim guys to get drunk and/or resort to massage-and-escort whoring prostitutes, or rape? No more immodest women pseudo-innocently flaunting indecently-exposed loose long hair, naked arms, nude legs, bare toes in general public view - whatever the temperature or sport? No more gals voluntarily posing for paid similarly-defiling porn in print and on internet?

No more sexually-harassed sadistically-aroused-and-incited abusers and child molesters not exercising self-control? No more evolunatics spewing out their anti-creationist apostasy? No more skin-color racists? No more anti-Jewish antisemites? No more pompous-ass smokers polluting the air, vulgar-language bullyboys and sassy-snide, back-talking, political-or-educrat-power-craving inferior-gender twits? No more robbers nor embezzlers greedy for money, fraudulently-misrepresentative slanderers, selfishly-jealous sarcastic, brawling or gang-group murderers?

Just the kind of everlasting environment the deliberately-wicked would not merely feel very uncomfortable but thoroughly hate being forever contained within.

They would actually instead prefer being eternally suspended in invisibly-flaming Outer Darkness away from anything or anyone environmental which even would start to remind them of the God they lividly despise and hate, against which arguably-completely-insane stupid idiots a benevolent Creator will unconditionally and lovingly forever punish them with.

But [and in stark contrast], a sin-free glorious environment of ecstasy and never-ending bliss is exactly the scenario which the intrinsically righteous desire to exist in forever - without any temptations of any sort ever impinging upon them again.

God has had his Divinely-inspired Bible authors authoritatively inform us that there will - eventually - never again, in the everlasting afterlife, be any kind of new or different Seducing Tempter, Lethal Tree, or anything of the sort imposed against the Elect who have always wanted and decided to use their free-willed choice to simply obey the Lord and His laws without reservation, with a "No Problem" child-like (not "childish") willingness.

. . . unless trespassing tempters encroaching on and against them seduce them to do differently and dastardly.