I believe in a Local Eden. God created the world (and people) by thiestic evolution as described in Genesis 1, and then created Adam and the garden in Eden through special creation as described in Genesis 2. When Adam and Eve ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, sin entered the garden for the first time. Sin had been alive and well outside the garden long before. What Adam and Eve did in the garden was to choose to be culpable for their actions, and they represented us when they did it in that each of us would make the same choice. This is God’s way of proving to us that he is not evil for creating us. Because we are not God, we are not perfect and therefore we will sin, and some of us will choose to reject God. Without the experiment of Adam and Eve, we could argue that God is the author of evil. Because of Adam and Eve, we can see that we are culpable. We can see that given the choice of living in a perfect garden, vs. being able to choose right from wrong for ourselves, we each would choose to have knowledge of good and evil. The result is that we require a world to live in that challenges us, and is difficult, and is filled with other people who have the freedom to make the wrong choices and hurt us. So, sin is just the necessary logical result of free will. Adam and Eve are the answer to the Problem of Pain. Jesus is the solution to the Problem of Pain.