I also felt that placing that which was off limits and would cause one's eternal death for taking from them was a taunt to do so and cheating. You know, "There's a dish of candy on the coffee table kids but don't let me ever find you taking any."
Why not put them away and out of sight so as not to risk the inevitable?
that said...
How often I sat wishing I was somewhere else than listening to HWA start his message with "There were two trees in the garden..." Ugh not again! I suspected he repeated it so often, not really because "you people don't get it" but because he was aging and sticking to familiar themes was easier. HWA was no theologian as were few if any of in the ministry. Their knowing came from merely reading the Bible and commenting on what they thought it meant or needed it to mean for the Church. I suppose I did that too in the naivete of my youth and feeling of specialness until I grew up and decided that the knowledge of Good and Evil, while originally in the story were God Fruit Trees and not for human consumption, would really be a good thing for humans to have.
So a little something to consider Carl Sagan who knew a bit more than Herbert W Armstrong , Garner Ted, Dave Pack, Bob Thiel, Gerald Flurry, Gerald Weston and just about every Church of God congregant on the problem of the knowledge of good and evil being withheld from us by religious need to believe rather than to experience the discomfort of actually knowing.
A Universe Not Made for Us?
"We have not been given the lead
in the cosmic drama"
in the cosmic drama"