Luther always considered himself a Catholic; he really didn't want to break from Rome. You are totally correct when you say he posted his theses on the notice board for discussion, but why didn't the church respond to his challenge? I have many issues with his writings and views so I'm not trying to defend him in any way. I also realise that large parts of the 'Protestant Reformation' were more political than religious. Church and State manipulation is to be found on both sides.
The Church in the renaissance was really corrupt and decadent. I don't blame the protestant reformation on Luther and Calvin, I hardly even think they should be given credit by those who think the protestant reformation was a good thing. The fault was on the Church for setting the ground for it to happen. And the great decadence wasn't just in the renaissance, it had begun centuries before in the Avignon papacy.
More importantly, the division within Christianity really started with the east-west schism, and protestantism didn't really begin with Luther. It begun with some of the heresies of the late middle-ages, such as the Waldensians, Hussites and to some extent the Cathars. My beef with Luther is a theological one being that he was a terrible heretic who corrupted the religion. He was morally correct when he denounced the sales of indulgence and the moral decadence in the clergy, too bad that he was wrong about everything else.
What was this pre-historic event you mention? I have a reply to all your beliefs, but you won't accept them because you doubt the infallibility of the Bible. My God is able to ensure His Word, the Bible, is true and infallible so that all people can know and understand His will. I'm trying to find some common ground for discussion. If there's no Adam, there's no Fall and therefore no need for Christ to die on the cross. As someone who teaches the Bible, I realise that all its patterns begin in Genesis. I see the Bible as an integrated whole and I support the basic hermeneutical principle of Scripture interpreting Scripture within the context of it being an integrated whole.
"What is this pre-historic event?" I don't know. I don't think anyone does. The whole point of Genesis is to point that somewhere in the history of man he learned about good and evil, was given to choose between both and became corruptible and fallen. As Chesterton said, that is pretty much the only point in Christian theology that can be easily proven, all you need to do is to look around.
Adam and Eve are representative of early humans so we can say they "ARE" if you will, just as Cain is a character that represents the first founders of civilization and etc. Genesis is a true text in its meaning, and indeed without it Christianity makes no sense, but reading it literally is a disrespect to it. It really is. Are you a creationist? I mean no disrespect, but to think that the earth was created in a week and that all human beings descend from a first couple is easily disproven by our current material knowledge of the world. Worst yet, with the ptolomaic and aristotelic knowledge of the first centuries A.D it was already unlikely to accept such ideas and hence the fathers of the Church denied a literal interpretation of genesis.
As every true Catholic, I do accept the infallibility of the Bible. Yet for it to be infallible it needs to be read in light of tradition and apostolic authority. If you look at the Catholics(well, at least the traditionalist ones) and Orthodox Christians, you will see that even after more than a Millenia of separation we believe mostly the same things and our doctrines mostly match. Yet if you look at the more than 40.000 protestant denominations in the world you will hardly find 4 or 5 that agree about the tennets of the Faith. That is because the Bible, by itself, is hardly infallible, and the only source of religious knowledge for the protestants is the Bible. In fact a twisted or ignorant mind can use it to reach all kinds of stupid notions, such as Jehova's witnesses believing that the soul is in the blood and hence they can't have blood transfusions, or Ellen G. White believing that the "lesser races of men" came to be through "amalgamation with animals" during the Biblical flood. Some of the central doctrines of protestantism are in themselves absurd(i.e denial of free will, predestination, etc) and they came to be through ignorance of tradition and selective and erroneous reading of the Bible.