One rule; one law; one order; don't eat the one fruit. Eat all the rest. Don't eat that one. Honor God by obeying that one rule. After all, honoring God, and thereby glorifying Him, is what man was created for.
People couldn't leave well enough alone back then, and they haven't ever since.
The result is entropy. There was no entropy before that. Man brought the entropy.
Exactly. One boring nirvana with no diversity and very lonely.
Either God can't meddle or he will end up all alone again.
Sorry there is no mathematical way around this.
The answer to this isn't something that can easily be said in a handful of words. But "saved" is saved from our own self-destruction.
If we do evil, we increase our risk greatly of being destroyed within this life.
But the real issue here is the assertion of an after life and the claim that a God can punish us for eternity with fire, brimstone, repetitive disembowelment, and gnashing of teeth for eternity.
I do not see mathematically that assertion can be true. If there is any meaningful feedback loop between our Universe and the after life, then the entropy of our Universe collapses to the perfect will of God, meaning a copy of him and the loss of diversity.
On several levels, it appears to be story crafted from existential fear of darkness of night (can't grow crops without the sun) that morphed into a mechanism for mass mind control via propagation of fear of an after life that can't be falsified and doesn't make any sense from an entropic analysis.
I too fell into this psychological trap of believing Christianity because of my idealism and desire to belief in an order that protects good from evil. But my understanding has become refined and more astute (I believe although I am willing to entertain counter logic that is worthy).
The rebuttal is of course that to prove your faith it can't be certain, otherwise there would be no value to be faithful.
I break down that logic in terms of the definition of love and mutual respect.