(Leaping back a bit in the thread, but...)

No, it is saying if he hadn't eaten the apple he'd have been obeying God.

That's assuming that God would have given up on tempting Adam to evil if the apple thing hadn't worked. Frankly, from what we see from the apple story of God's taste in practical jokes, this seems unlikely to me. It seems more likely, in fact, that God undertook it in rather the spirit of the makers of Candid Camera or Jackass: try lots of things, but only make a TV show of the one that the patsy falls for. Adam was, reasonably literally, damned if he did and damned if he didn't.

Peter

(paraphrased from the "gifts of fruit" sequence in The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe, but no less valid IMO for being penned by a novelist, not a theologian)