forbidden

An example of a word not in the text but added later. God forbade the deluge from continuing (Gen. 8:2, kala'), but what he said about the tree wasn't to "bid against" by imperative (prescriptive) but was to educate about natural consequence and to persuade by designing that consequence. There may be a blurry line between force and persuasion especially as to God's and our freewill, but we have relative power to act, which increases with good choices, and I call it persuasion if it respects that relative power.

The text is actually declarative (decretive): You are not designed to do this because of its consequence; just like "Thou shalt not" is technically declarative and means "you are not to", e.g. "[There is] no stealing". We call it "command" in Gen. 2:16 but this word, mizhwah, refers to a charge or burden to carry willingly and not to a slavish contract where we choose to perform, or not, in exchange for some kind of wages or punishment.

All that's to say the Edenic life and post-Edenic life are both intentional parts of one story, that God righteously designs the fruit to show forth the nature of contrary will and to initiate the story of its conquest. At the same time the sinner is responsible for abusing that design by partaking with sinful motive. It seems to me the One who accepts without resistance the evil will of others that he partake of the Tree (by their nailing him to it) is then accounted as partaking of death but without sin. For us ordinary humans, having partaken sinfully, we enter a state of partaking of Knowledge without guilt by our union with the One who partook alone without guilt. That's the sense in which there is no tension between the charge and the fulfillment: our willing acceptance of death as part of life and our submission to God's will about it. We are meant to embrace it, in God's good will, and yet we are to reject that part of us that embraced it in our corrupted wills.

Dark is just as real as Light

Not what dual-slit teaches. Relative dark is lesser light, but when we speak of absolute darkness or evil we speak of that which is not. This spectrum is real but it's designed to show All on one side and Nothing on the other (unlike a contrasting spectrum of dual poles like up and down).

What does moral awareness without God even look like?

It is possible for angels, or Edenic humans, to consider counterfactual hypotheticals without embracing them sinfully: that's "temptation" (solicitation) and need not be engaged. That which is allows us to consider that which is not and to recognize that what is not could tempt us. It appears that Helel was tempted by that which is not and broke his own will at every level in order to test whether anything whatsoever could be blurred between is and is not. Thousands of years of testing and no result has been found, but he keeps trying. Meanwhile mankind has collectively learned that obedience is better and has made significant never-again steps forward by committing solely to what is. So we all continue the choice process and testing and approving what is good, and that's why I've locked my choice in and committed it to Another to maintain rather than myself. By doing so in fact I reflect the prior Edenic state by resolving not to countenance any other possibility than moral awareness without sin: not that I've attained but that I press forward and will attain. The latter state recapitulates the former and is not robotic at all but a confluence of my will and God's.