But LDS doctrine says that there was no death until the fall of Adam. How does that square with the 4.5 billion year-old earth paradigm?
This is a logical inconsistency, and I have never, and do not now, have an explanation for it. I have a theory, and I have speculational beliefs, but no answer.
This does not bother me because of the phenomena of testimony, but otherwise, it very well may. Personally, my present theory is that there was, indeed, death, for hundreds of millions of years prior to the Garden and the Fall. What I suspect here is that vast chunks of the creation story, and the various phases of the creation and progress of life on earth, are missing from the scriptural recored. I think it quite possible that the earth was created in a paradisaical state, and then became mortal for much of its 4.5 billion year history. At some point it was raised again to a paradisaical state, for some period of time, such that Adam could
fall from that state to mortality. This is, it would seem, inconsistent with present teachings, which seem to assume a seamless transition from the creation to the Garden to the Fall. Yet, with further light and intelligence thrown on the subject, it may be quite easy to reconcile the apparent inconsistencies.
The fossil record is one of long periods of stasis followed by vast catastrophes that eliminate large majorities of organic life from the earth, only to have large numbers of completely new organisms appear in yet another phase, and then another, and another. The earth was created in a Terrestrial state, but I see no reason why it couldn't have then spent much of its time as Telestial sphere in preparation for this six thousand year moment in which the Father's children come to earth as players in the great cosmic drama in which we find ourselves. In other words, there's a huge lacuna in the creation story that we just don't have. The Gospel is still growing, line upon line, here a little, and there a little. I always return here to God telling Moses that he would only be told of things pertaining to
this earth.
This seems to have meant only this particular planet, but I've always wondered if the Lord also could not have meant different phases of this planets history that were either so different, or so unrelated to the mortal probation directly that the Lord would term it, figuratively,
another earth (the same earth, but under very different conditions only distantly related to that which man needed to know for his salvation and exaltation).
We know the earth was mortal during these ancient eras because we know the Dinosaurs, for one example, hunted, killed, and ate each other. We've found Dinosaur eggs (Proceratops, if memory serves me, in Mongolia).
I think that, within a Gospel doctrine context, the earth has been through a number of phases of which we have no knowledge, and that the Lord has given us what we can understand-or tolerate-up to this point.