See my follow up post taking Jeff’s #20 and expanding on it here. I then expanded further on the Eden as allegory theme here and here.

The Before Abraham category has all of these posts.

And very well laid out as well. I think you make a very compelling case here. I would be willing to buy the idea of a non-earthly Garden of Eden. In my cursory check of modern scriptures I saw nothing that specifically required the Garden of Eden to be literal or here on earth. Of course there are statements by modern prophets including Joseph that claim it was literally there. I’m not sure if that was declared to be revelation or not though. Have you researched that? If it is just a Zelph-like deal then I don’t know why there should be too much problem with it.

I do think that there is probably a much bigger problem with a non-literal Adam though. And I don’t think Adam as first prophet covers it — I still favor Adam as divine visitor and as bookend to Christ. I think it fits the scriptures and revelations best while also reconciling best with the other evidence. What do you think?

Dismissing the fall altogether is a notion that most members are simply not going to be willing to give up. But why is this? Is it the fall as we commonly understand it that cannot be rejected or the effects from and reasons for the fall which are more important? I suggest that it is the second, though saving the first would be icing on the cake. After all, Mc Conkie’s strong adherence to the doctrine of the Fall stems from two things: 1) his desire to maintain the credibility of the scriptures and 2) it’s association with the atonement which shall be dealt with shortly.

The doctrine of the fall is as follows and surely any attempt at reconciliation must account for such things:

1. It was an introduction of physical death for those involved.
2. It was an introduction of spiritual death for those involved.
3. It was an introduction of the ability to physically procreate, again, for those involved.
4. It was an introduction of knowledge in one form or another to those involved.

I have left these statements rather vague (i.e. “those involved”) for good reason. First, and most obvious yet least persuasive, is that abiguity makes reconciliation easier. Second and more persuasively, we already saw that organisms have been dying and procreating for billions of years. We cannot say that the fall introduced death and procreation into the earth with the fall of two human beings about 6,000 years ago. There is no evidence for these notions and if one is to accept any form of evolution, even IDC, we simply must reject such ideas.

Thus, we cannot apply the ideas Mormons commonly maintain about the fall to the entire earth and its history. Whatever the fall was, it was not the introduction of death and procreation to the earth. Whatever the fall is meant to describe, it is to that and that alone that we should also apply the introduction of spiritual death and knowledge.

Well, what could it have been? Some of you already know my theory concerning this issue and I will describe it now since I can think of no other event which these ideas could refer to in Mormon doctrine. It makes little mention of Adam and Eve but such shall be taken up in one of Mc Conkie’s later objections.

Before I go on the describe my theory, I should first address another category of “alternate falls.” These other attempts at reconciliation invoke an isolated fall where death and procreation were happening outside of the garden of eden. I find such attempts unsatisfactory for a couple of reasons.

1. We do not have a common ancestor which lived a mere 6,000 years ago which could have introduced any of these things to all of humanity.
2. Such a limited account of the fall seems to destroy the point of the fall all together, since it is supposed to be a description of all of mankinds predicament.
3. It seems very contrived and somewhat desperate. Though all attempts at reconciliation will seem that way to a certain degree, we should avoid excess.
4. Such schemes, as we will see in reviews of Skousens’ Earth in the Beginning and B.H. Robert’s The Way, the Truth and the Life, usually posit someform of mass destruction of life around 6,000 years ago. This simply isn’t true.

Some things to remember about the fall. Accounts of it tend to be closely intertwined with ceremony (the temple) or are rather legendary (genesis). Though I don’t presume to actually do so right now in too much detail, we must separate, the ceremony from the story and the myths from the historical kernal. In the ceremonial setting, the point is not to learn about Adam and Eve. It is to learn more about yourself. The genesis is objective history, it is a story with a point. With this in mind I will continue.

What we know about life before the fall is:

1. Adam was in God’s presence. God walked and talked with Adam.
2. Adam lived in a paradise, whereever this was, it was not “here.”
3. Adam had an immortal spiritual body of sorts. It is difficult to tell what this actually means.
4. Adam was ignorant in that he had not gained some form of knowledge which seems to be an experience of good and evil. He could only progress spiritually by subjecting himself to spiritual and physical death.
5. Satan was present was also present here in God’s presence. Only after goes against the Father is he banished.
6. Adam was childless. This seems to be related to the nature of his spiritual body.

After the fall the conditions were as follows:

1. Adam was cast out of God’s presence. We no longer had relatively easy access to God, but instead had to pray for “many days” for an angel to come.
2. Adam was cast out of paradise into was is termed a lone and dreary world. In other words we was sent “here.”
3. Adam became mortal. He received a mortal body just like we have now.
4. Adam could now have children. Again, just like we can with our bodies now.
5. Adam began to gain knowedge and progress spiritually.
6. Satan was also was cast out of the paradise. He then came to the lone and dreary world with Adam to tempt him.

If these events do not describe the Garden scene, what could they describe? An interesting question, especially when we consider that the name Adam means man or mankind (hence my reason for not mentioning eve, sorry ladies). If we replace Adam with mankind in all of these points we recognize these as describing something else, namely the pre-existence!

Now how this idea of the fall would work with our ideas of the premortal counsel would be a fun chore for another day, but we must admit that the parellels are startling. The story of our coming to earth and the story of the fall, seem to be telling the exact same story. Why not just consider them to be one and the same story, namely mankinds fall from heaven? This could be a valid way of reconciled the doctrine of the fall with evolution.

I can say that not really understanding the Fall doesn’t worry me too much since we don’t really know that much about the details and mechanics of the atonement either. But it is definitely worthy of deeper investigation I think.

The reason why I keep trying to force your hand on the fall is because associating it with Adam is where serious problems develop. We can say that Adam was divine, but again, unless he did anything of any importance whatsoever, so what? The fall would definitely qualify as an important act, but this is exactly where evolution exerts a strong force. How does the fall effect us and why should it? First of all, it didn’t seem to introduce any physical death into the world, and judging by the nature of Adam immediate predecessors and contemporaries there doesn’t seem any good reason to suppose that they couldn’t sin, so it would seem that his introducing spiritual death is out the window as well.

Of course some people such as Matt have advocated a “timeless” fall but I think that this begs more questions than it answers. Questions regarding free will come up, question which neither compatibilism nor libertarianism are very well equipped to handle as Blake has shown. This timeless nature of both the fall and the atonement doesn’t seem to square with mormon doctrine very well and seems to bring up a serious question regarding both the temporality of God and issues of backwards causation. I simply don’t think it is an option in the Mormon context.

I think you are right that the nature of the Fall is the next important question. The reason Adam is very different than Zenock is the reason Jesus is very different than John the Baptist. Jesus was a god before his arrival here and though not to the same degree, I believe the same thing largely applies to Adam. (I think it is no stretch to claim Michael stands next to Christ in authority/seniority. Brigham believed he was ahead of Christ while nearly all other church leaders since put him behind Christ.) So regarding the Fall, I only have vague hunches about it. I think it must have served a crucial function in our probation but I’m not sure of any details. It does seem to me that it stands as a bookend for our people here. The Fall on one side with the Atonement on the other side. A divine person condescending to perform each deed. The structure is interesting: The Fall is the beginning of the first act, the atonement is in the middle, and the two stars (Michael and Christ) are slated to show up together for the grand finale.

So basically, I’m saying I don’t really understand the fall still, but I know it matters.