>> And so... ummm... where'd the rivers come from?
>Springs.
And where'd the water for the springs come from? The evaporation/rain/snow cycle is the only means to get water uphill. Without getting water uphill, your spring would run dry, and that would be the end of it.
> I have learned that that is academic elitist snobbery. From gun control to global warming to evolution...
... and relativity, and chemistry, and biology and geology, and gravity....
> Just don't dismiss it out of hand
I dismiss nothign out of hand. Many things, though, as so astonishingly silly that the amount of evidence required to refute them is quite small.
You presume that all natural systems have always been as they are now. I remember in my first geology class, the very learned professor dismissing "catastrophism" as a legitimate engine for geologic change. Just a very few years later it was widely accepted that the dinosaurs were wiped out by, guess what, a catastrophic asteroid impact.
I do not worship at the altar of science: Elsewhere in today's posts there is an article about gravity waves exceeding the speed of light. We have known for years that light can be slowed down. Both of which poke holes in relativity, and the others you've mentioned are equally prone to error. Just because some theories can be "proven" does not make all of them correct.
I have no idea how the water got to the top of the hill. Some interpretations say "a mist" rather than "a stream". Maybe that is how. In any event the Bible says there were rivers so I accept that there were rivers...I cannot say how they got there.
You have failed to refute anything, only to demonstrate the ignorance of both of us.
"When the LORD God made the earth and the heavens - and no shrub of the field had yet appeared on the earth and no plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the LORD God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no man to work the ground, but streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground - the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being." Genesis 2: 4-7