22 And now, behold, if Adam had not transgressed he would not have fallen, but he would have remained in the garden of Eden. And all things which were created must have remained in the same state in which they were after they were created; and they must have remained forever, and had no end.
Ok, this is the basis of BCSpace's "loophole", that he imagines gets LDS doctrine out of the bind it's in in light of what science has now demonstrated about the Earth's natural history.
His argument is that evolution, life and death, etc. existed in the world for hundreds of millions of years, and that that is part of the process of "creation", and that at some point, "creation" was finished, and things that existed at that time entered a new phase of Earth existence, the post-Creation period.
I must make a point here about the use of the word "created". Note that the verse in 2 Nephi does not refer to some catch-all concept of "Creation"; it refers to the creation of actual things. "All things which were created must have remained in the same state in which they were after they were created." Thus, the creation spoken of is an individual act on a per-item basis. The things in existence, to which this doctrine applies, were all "created".
The language of this verse cannot be used to justify the "creation" of a concept such as "homo sapiens". Rather, each individual homo sapiens, and indeed each of everything else in existence at the time, is individually created.
BCSpace acknowledges that Adam would have descended from a line of homo sapiens which had already existed for into the hundreds of thousands of years. Adam had a mother and father, four grandparents (or fewer if the Garden of Eden were actually in Arkansas or West Virginia instead of Missouri), eight great-grandparents, etc. He might well have had cousins, even brothers and sisters. But at the very least, we know that Adam and Eve each would have had a father and a mother.
According to BCSpace, Adam would have been born into a world which had not yet been "created". He has to make this distinction, because "creation" was a process which was still on-going at the time, and had not yet been completed, nor could be until Adam came along.
So, Adam's parents, before Adam's birth, had not been created. Adam's grandparents had not been created. The dogs his tribe domesticated (hypothetical - go with me here) had not been created. The wheat, or corn, or barley, or whatever they were farming had not been created. The deer, or tapirs, or horses, or aurochs, or sheep, or whatever they herded or hunted, had not been created.
The wooly mammoths had not been created. The sabre-tooth tigers had not been created. The Clovis "Indians" had not been created. The Asians had not been created, yet they crossed the Bering Strait 12-15,000 or so years ago and formed the groups of "others" that would eventually submit to the religion and rule of some Israelite refugees that showed up one day.
You get the picture. None of the dinosaurs, the plants, the animals, etc. that were in existence of the past hundreds of millions of years had been or ever were "created".
And all of this was because Adam, a homo sapiens, born of homo sapiens parents, part of a line of homo sapiens going back over a hundred thousand years, ushered in somehow the completion of the "creation" process.
At some point subsequent to the passing of Adam as a human infant from his mother's uterus, through her birth canal and out into an as-yet uncreated world, all things became "created".
At this point, according to LDS teaching, nothing could have had blood flowing through its veins. Nothing was dying. Nothing could procreate. These are all attributes of what LDS doctrine holds to be the "created" state prior to Adam's Fall, and 2 Nephi 2: 22 backs this up, as you can read in the verse quoted above.
When was this distinction between "created" and "not yet created" resolved? At Adam's birth? I think we must assume, in the absence of any reasonable alternative, that Adam and Eve didn't make their world-changing decisions, and become husband and wife, at the age of one day old. Adam would have been an infant, growing up in a world filled with life and death, hunting, gathering, perhaps farming, herding, etc. If his parents were still living, they would have been different from Adam in that they would not have been possessed by spirit children of Heavenly Father, but their son Adam was. Adam would have been raised by non-God-children homo sapiens. He would have learned to speak from non-God-children homo sapiens. He would have been suckled at the teets of a non-God-child homo sapiens mother.
Will BCSpace argue that Adam's birth represented the moment at which "creation" was complete, and suddenly all things, including Adam's parents, other relatives, animals, etc. all instantly were transformed into bloodless, immortal, non-reproduction-capable Celestial beings? That the normal processes and activities of human life all over the world were suddenly, at Adam's birth, suspended by the massive interuption caused by the sudden disappearance of blood and death, and reproduction, of all living things?
And that this state of interuption of natural life as it had theretofor been known lasted however many years it took for Adam to grow old enough to be able to "fall" together with Eve in the Garden of Eden?
And then, suddenly, Adam bites into a piece of fruit, or if that's too literal, Adam performs some act for which the eating of the fruit stands as a metaphor, and suddenly everything reverts back to the exact same patterns of life, death, reproduction, etc. that had been used to prevail before everything and everybody were suddenly "celestialized" at the completion of "creation"?
Can we not all see how arbitrary, and non-sensical this view is? We know that trillions and trillions of living things came about and died in the many millions of years prior to the timeline of Adam, and yet none of these living things which were born, lived, ate, crapped, had sex, and died, had ever been "created"?
Is it not obvious that BCSpace's attempt to use the "after they had been created" perceived loophole in 2 Nephi is utterly, totally, and completely arbitrary, essentially meaningless in light of the reality of our world, and invented in his own mind for the sole purpose of providing an "out" for LDS doctrines and teachings in light of the harsh reality of things as they actually, really did occur?
Of this there cannot possibly be any doubt. BCSpace will comfort himself in the belief that he has not been refuted, a view to which he will hold by virtue of his own definition of the terms in question. It's his game, his rules, his definitions, and therefor he cannot possible lose - he has defined himself the victor, and with the power to invent meaning and define terms in whatever way he wants, he will not be convinced that he has "lost" this argument. That's fine. BCSpace, you go right on convincing yourself that your religion is still really "true", convince yourself that you have found what LDS Prophets for the last 170 years failed to do, ie: reconcile LDS teachings with the fruits of modern science, and so forth. It's your own virtual reality inside of your head. Enjoy it. It's your right.