Trying to make sense out of nonsense is a waste of energy. It could simply be whoever wrote the story got it wrong. Those that say that in the image of God refers to us each having the power to create our own reality, is neat and has some resonance, and I've used it in poetry, but that doesn't mean it actually rises to discernment. And, I admit, I made my own attempt at the line as I wrote in here https://medium.com/promptly-written/reimagining-sacred-texts-and-their-messages-ac5f6306a7f7 and a few other posts, which includes my view that the story depicts the choice a soul is always given to reincarnate as a completely different human, which interpretation rejects the part about defying God as utter nonsense.
"It dawned on me one night how screwed up the story is of the Garden of Eden, or I should say, how the interpretations of the allegory are wrong and have led to so much that has been and continues to be wrong in this world, particularly sexism. It occurred to me that so called “original sin” is quite the opposite. It is curiosity; it is thirst for knowledge not just of things, but of what is the best way to handle life, which some idiots turned into right vs wrong and good vs evil. Then it occurred to me that the tree of knowledge is Earth and the tree of life is Heaven. Then I googled and the Kabballah is the closest to my thought as it has the tree of life as “the tree of souls.” I was listening to Aloha Ke Akua and the line “in the image of God” caught my ear, and I started to wonder what the uncorrupted meaning would be. It could certainly refer to souls, and to a baby; after that life takes over — only a newborn is created in the image of god and newborns do not display any masculine vs feminine. Newborns are divine innocence.
In other words, the creation story and the part about eating the fruit and being banished from Eden had its basis in reincarnation as told to me by Rama, which by the time the creation story got written down, had been completely mangled, as have the words “created in the image of God,” which have been misunderstood and have led to the patriarchal anthropomorphism of God, which has exacerbated male chauvinism."
