Nationally, a study by Yale researchers determined that “the excess [COVID] death rate among Republican voters was 43% higher than the excess death rate among Democratic voters.”
They are literally being deceived to death.
It can certainly be interpreted in a number of ways, but I think you’re missing a key element of the story. Humans gaining ‘knowledge of good and evil’ is the process of humans becoming self-aware. Rather than simply unselfconscously being what we are without judgement, we sort our behaviors into good and evil. Suddenly they know they’re naked, and the question they’re faced with isn’t ‘why do you care that you’re naked?’ but ‘who told you that you’re naked?’. Animals are naked too, but they’re not aware of it because they’re not hung up on the mortality of their own actions.
It’s not so much, to my reading, that there’s an active decision being made to kick them out as that they’re no longer capable of benefiting from it. Their self-consciousness itself prevents them from being able to continue to enjoy that primordial state of being before the need to second guess themselves.
It represents the loss of human innocence. It’s not that they did wrong and were punished, it’s that they came to view the world in a way that’s harsher.
I agree with your interpretation completely. I definitely prefer viewing it as a metaphor and I think you’ve explained the metaphor perfectly. My former reaction was triggered by @CrayonRosary’s sentence “Then God cast them out for disobeying him.” I thought I would try to review their more literal interpretation from the same point of view as them – I find it to be an interesting excercise that can lead to better understanding.
