The (necessary) Fall of Adam and Eve and Our Ability to Choose

A few weeks ago, I purchased the book Christ and the New Covenant by Jeffrey R. Holland and I've been loving it! As I was reading in his chapter on the Atonement, I came across some stuff I thought I should share. I added the "bolding" myself (if that's even a word). For a great explanation on the plan of salvation, see http://www.lds.org/topics/plan-of-salvation?lang=eng

"God's premortal children could not become like him and enjoy his breadth of blessings unless they obtained both a physical body and temporal experience in an arena where both good and evil were present [and] such a temporal experience must be predicated upon moral agency...If choice is to exist and agency is to have any meaning, alternatives must be presented...Righteousness has no meaning without the possibility of wickedness. Holiness would hold no delight unless we realized the pain of misery. Good could have no moral meaning if nothing could be considered bad. Even life-the nature and eternal possibilities of which are the subject of the plan of salvation...-would have no meaning if we knew nothing of the nature and limitations of death. In short, without opposites and alternatives, "there would have been no purpose in the...creation of [human life]."...[Adam and Eve] were willing to transgress knowingly and consciously (the only way they could "fall" into the consequences of mortality, inasmuch as Elohim certainly could not force innocent parties out of the garden and still be a just God) only because they had a full knowledge of the plan of salvation, which would provide for them a way back from their struggle with death and hell...Adam and Eve answered forever the plaintive question that is so often heard: "If there is a God, why is there so much suffering in the world?" The answer to that is we now live in a fallen world filled with opposites, a world in which God is the most powerful but decidedly not the only spiritual influence. As part of the doctrine of opposition, Satan is also at work in the world, and we knew before we came here that he would bring grief and anguish with him. Nevertheless, we (through Adam and Eve) made the conscious choice to live in and endure this mortal sphere of opposition in all things, for only through such an experience was godly progress possible...We wanted the chance to become like our heavenly parents, to face suffering and overcome it, to endure sorrow and still live rejoicingly, to confront good and evil and be strong enough to choose the good...But Adam and Eve made their choice for an even more generous reason than those of godly knowledge and personal progress. They did it for the one overriding and commanding reason basic to the entire plan of salvation and all the discussions ever held in all the councils of heaven. They did it "that men might be." Had Adam and Eve never left the garden..."they would have had no children."...The privilege of mortality granted to the rest of us is the principal gift given by the fall of Adam and Eve...That doctrine, fully understood and thoroughly taught only in the restored gospel is as important as any taught in the entire Book of Mormon. Without it the world would be ignorant of the true nature of the fall of Adam and Eve, ignorant of their life-giving decision, and ignorant of the unspeakable love they demonstrated for all of God's sons and daughters."---Jeffery R. Holland, Christ and the New Covenant, published by Deseret Book in 1997