The following is from my husband, an Australian national from one of the suburbs of Adelaide:
Kerry,
First of all, Australia is not 70% Christian. It's more like 10% at the maximum. The way you are defining Christian is evidently someone who might go to church once or twice a year for a special occasion. If you want to call that 70%, then fine. But if you are talking about committed followers of Jesus Christ, it is nowhere near that. Operation World, from memory, placed evangelical Christians at about 1 or 1.5% of the population of Australia. I'd like to get an actual figure for you on that, but my book is not here.
So my wife was not slandering Australia. We have many close friends there even though I live in the United States now. We both love my native country.
As far as the knowledge of good and evil is concerned, do you think there is another good apart from God? It is obvious that God walked with Adam and Eve in the garden in the cool of the day, and therefore the sum of all good and truth was right there with them, and communicating with them. In other words, they knew absolute good! What they didn't know was evil, which only comes as the result of disobedience.
Once Lucifer fell, as recorded in both Isaiah and Ezekiel, he became the originator of evil. Jesus called him the 'father of lies'. When he, as Satan, questioned God's clear directive to Adam and encouraged Eve to think in another direction, he was attempting (successfully) to introduce evil to the earth. It was this that God did not will for Adam and Eve or for any of us. Knowing it would happen, however, the sacrifice of His Son was a truth, a spiritual reality, from the moment of creation, as Revelation 13:8 tells us, although it was played out at the right time on earth.
The tree of the knowledge of good and evil was the point at which a choice could be made. We are told in the New Testament by the Lord Jesus that "If you love me, you'll keep my commandments." Adam and Eve loved God, but love cannot be compelled. God had commanded them not to eat from the tree. Here was the point where their love for God could be exercised in obedience. Or another choice could be made.
In choosing that option, they chose the very evil God did not want them to be involved in or become part of.
Therefore my wife was correct. And not only her, this is the view of a good many evangelicals across the world. It is biblical. If you do not subscribe to this view, you will have to explain what good there is apart from God.
All the best,
Barry Setterfield
www.setterfield.org