Guilt

I think that it would be useful to separate actual guilt from feeling guilty. We cannot control our feelings of guilt. We feel bad about something that we have done in the immediate past, because we wish that we had the ability to alter the past. Unfortunately we cannot. Moral actions are something that we ought to do, and ought implies can. As such, I don't think that we should incorporate guilt into morality given that we cannot alter the past, meaning the guilt can have little role in it. The feeling that we identify with guilt, which is more of an extension to empathy, perhaps, is useful in allowing us to realize that we have done something wrong and that we ought not to do that thing again. Determinism hardly affects this given that, once a person realizes that something is wrong, because they feel bad (and they cannot control that) they know that they should not do that again. Additionally, effectively, humans have the illusion of choice, and if something doesn't cause them to alter their negative behaviors, we ought to try to help them to become determined to do so.

Aligning Views with Reality

I think that it is always important to align our views with reality. If reality is that non-human animals can feel pain and that it is bad to inflict pain, we should align our views and actions to create as little pain as possible. If reality is that people with darker skin are people no different from people with lighter skin (besides phenotypic characteristics), then we should align our views and actions away from slavery. I do not think that the expense of having to change the system and think differently should change that. As with Plato's allegory of the cave, we ought not entertain ourselves with the shadows of what is. We should seek the real thing. I think, then, that if the world is determined, we ought to come up with a different theory of ethics. It may have taken thousands of years to understand ethics currently, but if reality is determined and people cannot be held responsible for choosing to do a wrong thing, we ought to come up with new theories of ethics and justice. If something is wrong, we ought to abandon it. If something is the truth, we ought to accept it, even if it "makes a mess" of our current system of beliefs, because our current system is wrong, and continuing it would not be useful.

Paving Our Path

The story of Genesis, I think, is a story of humanity choosing a path for itself. Basically, I think there is a historical explanation. For brevity's sake, I will be rather imprecise. The beginning of the agricultural evolution is marked with independence from nature. Before the agricultural evolution, when we were hunter-gatherers, we had to rely on the land (the animals and vegetation therein).  Eventually, we realized that we could manipulate the land to allow us to live beyond our needs. The new agriculturalists, started to take over land in order to produce more food. This upset the hunter-gathers who then proceeded to tell stories saying that somewhere these agriculturalists went wrong in thinking that they could act like gods and control their own destiny. Thus, I think, is the story of the tree of knowledge. A later part of Genesis, which I think is still a reflection of the agricultural revolutions, is the story of Cain and Abel. Cain, a tiller/agriculturalist, kills Abel, the herder.

Anyway, that was the short, informal, and slightly imprecise version of my historical explanation  for two parts of the story of genesis.