Jessy asked me what the opposite of a dog is. When I told her I didn't know, she looked at me quizically and told me it is a cat. But what about salt? Mustard? Cheese?* Obviously I was bad at this game.
However, I tried to rectify my reputation by explaining the nature of opposites. I was told, and here blindly repeated, that a true opposite is something that cannot exist without something else. I gave the example of light and darkness, and good and evil before realizing my error. I had argued this before, but thankfully then on the correct side.
A girl in my English class had said that good and evil didn't exist when Adam nad Eve were created, and that the only way we can know good is through evil.
Well, then. God was good before humans knew evil, right? So even while evil or darkness can't exist without good and light (evil being twisted good and dark being the absence of light), good and light can exist independantly: you can have perfection and full light.
God is perfection, and Adam and Eve were created in goodness, hence God said: "It is good."
As for knowing good through evil, perhaps. If Adam after he had eaten the fruit could have stopped himself in the past, I'm sure he would, for he realized what he'd lost. He ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,** and so the knowledge of good and evil are true opposites since they exist dependently. Good can exist without the knowledge of good, but to have the knowledge of good one must have evil.
I'm pretty sure Jessy didn't want to know all of that.
*No, she didn't tell me the opposite of cheese
**Genesis 2:17
