How essential is a literal Adam and Eve story to Mormonism?

[Hagoth]

The Book of Revelation isn't relevant to the discussion. The Eden story was written six or seven centuries prior to Revelation; Revelation is dependent on Genesis, not vice versa. All Revelation can tell us is how some early Christians interpreted Genesis. There is no sense in Genesis itself that the serpent is anything other than a serpent. It is explicitly described as such: "Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the Lord God had made" (Gen 3:1).

I totally agree. What I'm pointing out is the way Mormonism conflates scriptures and concepts that are totally unrelated in order to invent narratives and doctrines out of thin air. In Revelation 12 Satan loses a battle with Michael and is cast out of heaven. There is also a dragon who takes a third of the stars with him. When did it happen? It doesn't say. So we put all of that together into a war in heaven between Satan and the preexistent Adam and place it in a chronology where it happened before the Eden story and, viola, Satan has convinced a third of God's preexiestent children to leave heaven and help him mess things up for the now-incarnate Michael-as-Adam and his progeny. Somehow the reptile has become synonymous with Satan and morphed from dragon to snake, but close enough.

[AdmiralHoldo]

One day back when I was TBM, my brain went, Wait a minute, if Adam and Eve were the literal first and only humans... Who did their children reproduce with???

And ever since then, I haven't believed the story literally. A God who can't come up with a better plan than inc*st for populating the earth, is not a God worthy of my worship.