The Spiritual World According to the Bible

God did not trick man. He put them on the earth creating them in his image, giving them dominion over it, allowing them to rule as his representation on earth. We had a choice, either follow God and rule by his wisdom, and choose life, or we could rule by our own wisdom, decide what is right or wrong for ourselves and choose death. Eat from the Tree of Life or the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

Well, we wanted to be like gods and so we chose the latter, and look at what has become of this world. Look at the results of our actions. You say that sin is only sin because God says so, but I think that the one who created this world, it's laws, how it functions, and how everything works here knows better than we do what actions are beneficial and good and what actions are harmful and evil.

The fact is we humans put our faith in our own reason and our own capacity for decision making and discernment for what is right and wrong when we are pathetically limited. We know know nothing truly of the world and the universe we live in. We certainly know more now than we did in history of course, but this is only a lesser degree of ignorance, most things are still hidden from us, likely the most important and consequential things. And even the individual human does not have running around in his brain the entirety of the deposit of human knowledge, which again, is still rather pitiful, and only knows what his species collectively knows in part.  And even that knowledge could be wrong, both of the individual and the species and many points of it are fiercely debated.

Likewise, though every person considers themselves rational, in truth, few are, even the most rational among us, and all to some degree are governed by our emotions, our biases based upon our negative and positive experiences and, as you say, our imaginations. Likewise we know not what will happen in the future, nor do we know everything, or perhaps even most things in the past, nor do we know what is outside of our perception in the present in secret rooms on the other side of the world or in your own country among powerful people, or even not so powerful people that will affect our and all of humanities lives someway or another.

We also cannot truly predict how our actions will effect other peoples' lives with any certainty, whether cruel actions, or similarly actions one thinks are kind but paves the road to hell with good intentions. What one thinks maybe completely righteous and moral may in fact lead to untold misery for oneself and others. Some peoples actions, even seemingly very insignificant ones, may effect the whole of humanity one day. All of these variables and all of these things we do not know, and indeed cannot grasp because we are limited, woefully, pitifully limited. God grasps all of these things. This is what it truly means to be omniscient.

The trees are symbols and what happened in Eden is simply what happens to all of us every day. Satan comes to tempt us with that old temptation, will we listen to God and do what he says or do what is right in our own eyes? This is just the first time this happened as per the Biblical story. The Hebrew word used for Day, when God says in the day you eat of it, you will die is bə·yō·wm. This is a collection of how it is used elsewhere in scripture. biblehub.com/hebrew/beyom_3117.htm It does not neccisarily mean that their going to die instantly. They lost access to the Tree of Life which was how they were getting immortality, thus they would die, because they were mortal.