I, though I'm an atheist, interpret the tale of Adam and Eve as indicating that people will most likely do wrong at least a few times in their lives.
I'm pretty sure we've all told that lie that didn't have to be told, we've done something out of self-interest that harmed someone else even indirectly... I think it's a stretch of the imagination to say that anyone is completely innocent of any sort of wrongdoing.
So, in my interpretation of the story, Adam and Eve simply represent all of humanity doing that one thing that they regret later on.
As a literal story though I think it's ridiculous. Why does God need a forbidden tree? He doesn't... placing it there can be one thing and one thing only: entrapment. Furthermore, in the literal story Adam and Eve were innocent; they ostensibly had no knowledge to differentiate good from evil.
Well, "deception" is evil. A person who can't tell good from evil doesn't know what "deception" is. This is much like a small child doesn't know that when a stranger says to get in the car with him that he's "deceiving" them until you TEACH the child what deception is in order to protect them.
Ostensibly, in the literal story, Adam and Eve were deceived by a serpent and had no means by which to understand that when the serpent said they could eat the fruit that such was a deception. Being without the means to understand it was deception, OF COURSE they're going to eat the fruit: if you lie to a person who doesn't understand lies, then in their mind what you say to them must be true because you said it. (Has anyone ever seen Galaxy Quest? There's a race of aliens that don't know what lies are, which the antagonist uses to his advantage by lying to them and they inevitably always believe his lies as true).
Some argue, "But God said clearly not to eat from the tree." That doesn't matter though. The serpent saying they *can* eat from the tree -- to a person who doesn't understand lies -- overrides the original command. It's just like if you tell your children it's not okay to get into a stranger's car, but they don't know what a lie is, and a stranger tells them "I know your parents said not to get into a stranger's car but I'm telling you it's okay." Some kids will believe that if they aren't familiar with what deception is.
So, long winded rant over... creating beings ignorant of lies and then allowing a liar to manipulate them knowingly (omnisciently) is worse than entrapment, it's a setup. The one thing Adam and Eve required to protect themselves against deception was the one thing that they were forbidden to do. That is, I believe, a true catch-22. It definitely raises a lot of questions about the literal interpretation of the Genesis story.