I’ve wondered, if the Fall had never happened and we all were still in the Garden of Eden, what a one chapter version of Scripture would look like: IMO, it would go something like Genesis 1 with the last verse being: “And a good time was had by all, and God saw that that was good.”
I’m not the right person to consider the difference. I’m quite happy to get my produce and plants from the store, although I have enjoyed my wife’s gardening, when she did, and brief visits to gardens.
Although I’m familiar with the reasoning, I have a different perspective, belatedly understood/discovered/revealed (?) found in recent years.
I suspect there’s a difference between robots and human beings. I don’t think it’s possible to hypnotize a robot, but it is possible to hypnotize a human being. I’ve seen it done and have yet to see a robot hypnotized.
If the cosmos–including us–is “just a machine”, it might indeed seem sort of pointless. As MarkD said:
But, … inspired by Paul (cf. 1 Corinthians 13: “For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.”), my perspective suggests that “transformation” and “hope” dispel the universe’s pointless-ness and FOW-less Determinism’s meaningless-ness. [FOW-less = missing Freedom of Will.]
Rooted in the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus, we “automatons” have cause to believe that life in this world is not “all there is”. The transformation is not over until the divinely desired transformation is completed and the transformed see the Transformer “face-to-face” and know Him even as they are now known. Faith in “cause to believe” gives the believer “cause to hope.”
Hebrews 11:1. “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”
As I suggested to MarkD: “… “hope” is the stuff that prevents fatalism. In my case, it’s not unfounded hope based solely on Bible verses, but hope encouraged by Bible verses vindicated by and founded on those who have loved me more than I deserved and when I deserved nothing.”
IMO, the unfinished story of the Gardener’s work is greater than Carlo Collodi’s "The Adventures of Pinocchio.