I just don't understand why many Christians believe God would use a method (eg. evolution) that goes a long way to disapprove his existence, to create the world. It just doesn't make sense to me. That's like God is messing with his creations to make belief in him even harder than it already is.

All a religion truly needs is a diety or 'supreme being(s)'. Christianity has Jehovah God, Islam has Allah, Hinduism has Shiva, Kali, and the millions of gods, humanism has man, enviornmentalism has nature, and evolution has science.

The difference, and it is a large one, is that environmentalists, humanists, and evolutionists do not worship these concepts, do not venerate them as their creators, or pray to them for assistance in their material and spiritual lives. (Those who do literally worship nature would not fall under 'environmentalism', but rather forms of New Age, Wicca, or certain Paganisms). I'm assuming here that by 'deity" you mean a literal, actually exists somewhere in the cosmos figure of supreme being (even if you consider that being demonic in nature). How are man, nature, and science real, literal, actually exists somewhere in the cosmos supreme beings? Man is clearly not this, nature is clearly not this, and science is a man-made concept. From my understanding, in Christianity God is meant to be the literal focus and moral compass of everyday life, and choices are to be made based on whether or not they would glorify God. Do people who believe in evolution make choices based on whether they would glorify the Theory? Is it their moral compass?

From a purely Christian/Muslim perspective, yes, these can be classified as idolatry, and therefore, forms of false religion. From outside standpoints, they can't be. Yes, people could choose to worship these (the worship of man/self would be Satanism, for instance). Living a "green" lifestyle may be done out of a sense of morality towards the environment, but someone living this lifestyle doesn't expect that choice to grant them entrance to paradise after death.

Environmentalism in and of itself cannot be classified as a religion, because it does not concern itself with religious themes. It is world-based, and human-based, totally concerned with the physical realm of our existence and does not delve into the spiritual. Evolution is much the same. The closest evolution comes to any sort of religious overtone is that it could be seen as a creation myth in its own right, but the resemblance ends there.

I took a religious ethnography class last year, and we studied the case of a Muslim faith-healer in India. She considered herself to be a true and devout Muslim, and yet she believed in the power and existence (but not divinity) of the Hindu gods and the lesser spirits in the Quran, and made amulets and performed spiritual healing rituals accordingly. Islamic "specialists" (people who studied Islam, but did not practice it) in the US claimed that she was not Muslim because of this. Who was right? Does the opinion of some non-Islamic professors in California count more than her own? So what really makes something a religion? A formal definition made by some political entity based on a set of anthropological parameters? Or can what is and is not religion just be decided upon by the individual?

I will agree that we, in our sinful nature have caused harm to God's creation. We are to be good stewards of it, but I do not believe that we can get closer to, or gain points with Him, by trying to save the earth.

Taking good care of what we were given is not about "gaining points" with God. It's about taking good care of what we were given, in this case, the world. (And we have not done a bang-up job thus far.)

I think it's amusing that people are fond of saying science is based on the assumption that there is no God, when science was founded by men who believed God was necessary for science to work. To me, God (whatever divine creative force that chunk of letters means to you) cannot be taken out of science, because to study science is to study the effects of God in creation.

What I do understand is taking religious dogma and text out of scientific discussion and practice. This is not the same as assuming the nonexistence of God. It simply limits scientific experimentation to what we can observe and prove in our own, physical sphere. Science simply states how the world works, not why it works the way it does. The sciences that delve beyond the immediately provable (like the study of the universe and the study of prehistory) are the tricky ones, and the ones that are by necessity based on conjecture. The problems arise when people at large take those conjectures and theories and report them as fact and Truth, when they are nothing but guesses.

The Flood also explains how we can find coral and oceanic species fossilized in high altitudes such as the Guadalupe Mountains (near 9,000 feet) and the Rockies.

So can plate tectonics. I looked up some global flood myths, and what struck me as odd was the assumption that all these myths were derivations from the story told in the Bible. How can that be? The Aztecs weren't Christianized until the 1500s, and yet they have a similar myth, presumably created at the same time as the Bible story, based on an event that happened globally for the same 40 days. Do all the dates of all these myth line up? Of course, many of these cultures relied on oral history, so the global flood myth could be nothing more than a reverse-engineered result of cross-cultural polination. The written accounts that do exist don't support that, though. So which written account came first?

Fencer, evolution doesn't begin with assumptions regarding the existence of God or Not. It begins with the Evidence.

And I'm not ignoring your oosts, but they are (like your last one) so riddled with misapprehensions and misunderstandings of how the Scientific Process works, I just don't know where to start . Plus, having gotten to know you a bit this past year, I almost feel like I'm being rude pointing it out .

The fact is Stephen J Gould and Dawkins' books can explain how evolution works far better than I could, but I think your understanding about the role of mutations is a misapprehension. Life responds to it's environment, those who have beneficial adaptations survive, those who don't, die out. Perfectly consistent and Non-Random . If the environment changes, Species that can adapt change too.

Evolution is a Biological Theory (backed by Mountains of Evidence) that has absolutely nothing to do with gravitational ratios. I'm not sure why you would try to solve a Physics problem with a Biological Answer . That's like asking a Plumber to fix your Computer . In any case, a Physicist could answer your question, but being a layperson I would have to do some research before answering.

And again, Floods do not explain the Grand Canyon,. The architecture of the Grand Canyon has been thoroughly explained by Geologists (also Not Evolutionists ), who understand things like erosion (by Water or Glaciers), sedimentation, plate tectonics etc. etc.

We know for a fact that much of what is now land was once under water, and vice versa. Again, a Geologist can explain what is wrong with many of your assertions far better than I could, and i don't have time today to google everything to counter your points .

Also Floods occur everywhere all the time (just like last year in the Midwest). Of course every culture is going to have flood stories. It really doesn't prove anything.

And seeing as you conclude by repeating the totally false assertion that Evolution has no scientific basis (when it is one of the most Empirically supported and Succesful Theories to ever exist), I would like to point out that So Many Fields of Scientific Discipline have amassed more evidence than you could shake a stick at , including Biology, Genetics, Anthropology, Archaeology, Zoology, Geology, Paleontology, Chemistry, and yes...even Physics . And that's just a short list off the top of my head .

All of the disciplines provide answers to whichever questions relate most specifically to their field.

Draugrin makes some great points about the shared global myths of human kind,
and if you want to understand more about why human cultures the world over share so many myths, try reading Joseph Campbell.

I could go on too ya know .

Peace and Long Life

Gandalf's Beard

Physicists

There is no basis for this statement. Evolution or science itself, says nothing about God one way or the other. That is entirely made up , based on the fact that a few scientists happen to be atheists.

And by default they operate under the assumption that there is no God. God cannot be quantified by Science, and since scientists look at the concept of God as being outside of the realm of Science they simply exclude Him from the process altogether. The problem with this is that if you have a Deity of any kind who played even a small part in the process of Creation you have to factor that in.

It's like a carbeurator and an oil filter having an argument with each other under the hood of your car. The carbeurator insists that everything in the engine just popped into place over time with no outside action while the oil filter insists that there is some purpose for the engine and that some outside force must have made it. Which one is right?

And I dare say there's more than just 'a few' Atheists who fall into the scientist category.

Creationism and ID don't have any empirically scientific theories, merely an opinion based on the Bible and Faith. There is NO Science supporting their position.

Creationism begins from a different starting position than Evolution does. Evolution begins with the premise that things just sort of popped into existence on their own with no outside influence. Creationism begins with the concept that God brought everything into existence. This is the single biggest difference between the two ideologies. Both sides use the same data but translate it in different ways. Now your dismissal of Creationism as being a "non science" is perfectly fine, and you've made fun of it in the past, which is also perfectly fine, but don't make the mistake of thinking that because we have different starting positions that Creationism is the default "wrong position". Don't forget either that Atheism-based Science is a relative newcomer to the scene and that just a few centuries ago most Scientists were (for the most part) on the same page, and so while standing under the Atheistic Science umbrella may give one the impression that they're able to explain away everything with the idea that there's no God involved in the process you still have a ton of question marks (pages and pages of them) out there you have no way of explaining that a Creationist, on the other hand, can offer rather viable reasons for.

Even though I am sympathetic to the notion of Guided Evolution, there is no evidence to support this position either.

I totally agree. It's not that God couldn't use such a process to bring about the Earth (it is totally within His power to do so), it's more that it flies in the face of everything the Bible says. God created the world and stated that "it was very good", a place with no death, no disease, no unnatural decay, all of which are things that by default are part and parcel with every segment of Evolutionary theory. Theistic Evolution tries to fuse Evolution with Biblical processes and the two simply cannot meld because they're based on two totally different, for lack of a better word, philosophies.

This isn't like the old Reese's Peanut Butter Cup TV commercials ("Hey! You got your chocolate bar in my peanut butter!", "Hey, you got your peanut butter on my chocolate!"). You have to completely discard much of what the Bible says to embrace it, and therein lies the biggest problem, because the Bible was built by God in such a way that it all ties intricately together, and Genesis is the bedrock which forms the very foundation it stands on. Removing the foundation makes the structure topple at worst and makes it very shaky at best. Theistic Evolutionists unwittingly knock out one of the legs on the chair they're standing on by taking the position they do. It doesn't stop them from being Christians but it definitely weakens their base of support.

Sorry, just couldn't resist the question...

God created the world and stated that "it was very good", a place with no death, no disease, no unnatural decay, all of which are things that by default are part and parcel with every segment of Evolutionary theory.

How do we know that is what God meant by "very good"? Where is God's definition of "very good" in this context?

How do we know that is what God meant by "very good"? Where is God's definition of "very good" in this context?

I'm kind of surprised you don't know. "Very good" would be a world without sin. Sin directly leads to death (Romans 8:28, if memory serves correctly). Death and sin are "very bad" in the eyes of God, and He has zero tolerance for them (which is why Christ came in the first place...again, everything eventually ties back to Genesis). Everything at the beginning was without sin and "very good", until Humanity's fall, which is when sin entered the picture. It ultimately became so bad and corrupted that God ended up wiping almost all life from the planet. So in that "context" I would say that Edenic living, free of sin, death, unnatural decay, etc. would be "very good" to God. If death existed before Eden He wouldn't have found it particularly good, and would have failed before He even began, yes?

Shadow:
Now your dismissal of Creationism as being a "non science" is perfectly fine, and you've made fun of it in the past, which is also perfectly fine, but don't make the mistake of thinking that because we have different starting positions that Creationism is the default "wrong position".

Well, I've been back through most of my posts on the old forum and this one as I have been saving many of our conversations. And I think one would be hard-pressed to characterize my assertions as Dismissals or Mockery .

Indeed I have consistently stated that I don't have a problem with the Miraculous "God Can Do Anything" view of Creation. It is internally logical and consistent and cannot be disproved. However, that is because it is Beyond Science. It is a Religious/Theological/Faith Based Position.

So my Beef, is that attempting to use science to support a Non-Scientific view of Creation is Unreasonable and Illogical.

I happen to think the Scientific view of creation is more credible and that Genesis is a Creation Myth (one of many). But I have always given the Miraculous View it's due, and I have consistently been open to the (slim ) possibility that I could be wrong.

But it's partly because I don't think God would Hoax us by planting Fake Fossil Evidence and Fake Radio-Active Dating Methods etc. etc. that I feel pretty darn confident in my perspective .

Live Long and Prosper

Gandalf's Beard

God created the world and stated that "it was very good", a place with no death, no disease, no unnatural decay, all of which are things that by default are part and parcel with every segment of Evolutionary theory.

How do we know that is what God meant by "very good"? Where is God's definition of "very good" in this context?

Goodness is an attribute of God. He is without death, disease, decay, etc. Such things entered the world in Genesis 3, when God pronounced various curses on mankind, the snake, and the ground because of Adam and Eve's sin. When God creates something, it's perfect! Why? Because it comes from a perfect being. We're the ones who messed things up, not Him. When we make something, it's imperfect because it originates from an imperfect being. Death, disease, decay: the results of sin and corruption.

"Good" in Genesis 1-2 is the Hebrew towb. And it means, as an adjective,

good, pleasant, agreeable
a) pleasant, agreeable (to the senses)
b) pleasant (to the higher nature)
c) good, excellent (of its kind)
d) good, rich, valuable in estimation
e) good, appropriate, becoming
f) better (comparative)
g) glad, happy, prosperous (of man's sensuous nature)
h) good understanding (of man's intellectual nature)
i) good, kind, benign
j) good, right (ethical)

It is variously translated as "good, better, well, goodness, goodly, best, merry, fair, prosperity, precious, fine, wealth, beautiful, fairer, favour, [and] glad." "Very good"? Add "exceedingly" or "much" to the meanings of "good." Source: BlueLetterBible.com.

Very good" would be a world without sin. Sin directly leads to death (Romans 8:28, if memory serves correctly). Death and sin are "very bad" in the eyes of God, and He has zero tolerance for them (which is why Christ came in the first place...again, everything eventually ties back to Genesis). Everything at the beginning was without sin and "very good", until Humanity's fall, which is when sin entered the picture. It ultimately became so bad and corrupted that God ended up wiping almost all life from the planet. So in that "context" I would say that Edenic living, free of sin, death, unnatural decay, etc. would be "very good" to God. If death existed before Eden He wouldn't have found it particularly good, and would have failed before He even began, yes?

You beat me in replying to Draugin's question! But good explanation, better than mine. And the verse you're thinking of is Romans 6:23.

Gandalfs Beard, my question about providing evidence was also quite a bit rhetorical, even though it did seem directed. My point to that question is that it has been asked many, many times, by students and professors throughout. Every time, the one supporting evolution also gives the same answer: "We have all this proof through every scientific field: biology, chemistry, geology, etc". Yet they (even Hakwins and Gould) can't single out one to use for thier argument. I've seen this happen first hand, when a guest speaker came to my college, Dr. Charles Jackson (whom I've mentioned before) asked the same question. Name one example of the proof and the answer was there was so much they couldn't pick one.

As for mutations, even though I am not a biologist, I'm not stupid on the subject either. Yes, creatures adapt. This is called micro-evolution. This is scientifically observable and perfectly fine. I recently watch a History Channel episode on whether Darwin was right or not. Since evolution depends on one species being able to adapt into another, they used a bear. A Kodiak Bear lives in Alaska and a Polar Bear lives in the Arctic. Their resoning that a Kodiak Bear could have moved further north, and adapt to a whiter coat of fur. This is an example of micro-evolution. But guess what? Both are still bears.

The whole concept of a lizard changing to a bird or a fish to a mammal is ridiculous when you think about it. I've seen it in the textbooks. When fish decided to become land animals.... Wait, let's say that again. When fish decided to become land animals.... How does that happen? Did you know gills can only work when the fish is completley under the water? Did you know lungs cannot work underwater? (Whales have to come up for air frequently, even though they can hold it for a long time.). Both don't work and yet when one goes from one to the other, they need the other IMMEDIATELY. For lizards to change to birds, they can't just develop feathers. They have to completely redesign their bone structure. Birds have hollow bones, which make them light enough for flight. Lizard bones are solid. Biological evolution also states that all life came from a embryotic like soup, and molecules somehow came together to form cells. Oxygen kills protiens. There are two types of protiens as well (I can't recall the names). One type is absolutely critical for life. The other is absoutely detramental to life. Just one of these bad protiens can kill an organism. There are parts of each cell that protects the proteins and those proteins need that protection immediately. It does NOT take a science degree to see what's going on here.
When a mutation occurs, it is an aberration to the DNA already there. I already described this with bacteria. The ones that survive the drugs, radiation, and everything else, already have the defense against it. They didn't adapt to it as though they were testing it and seeing what was needed to fight it. That is what evolution is trying to say. The bacteria doesn't have time to survive it and figure out how to fight it. It can't watch its fellow bacteria die and see how to fight it as we can. It either already has what it takes to survive, or it doesn't and dies. And when a mutation occurs, even if it shows some benefit, it also shows something that prevents it from doing what it's suppossed to do.

Now tectonic plates. Yes, they help the explination of coral fossils in mountain ranges. They also explain Noah's Flood quite well. Genesis 7 states that Flood waters came from the sky via 40 days and nights of rain, but also from fountains of the deep. It fits just nice if the location of the plate boundaries are the very locations of where the foundations of the deep broke forth. Now, ever heard what would happen to the tectonic plates if they are soaked in water? They do strange things like forming mountain ranges and valleys. Genesis 10 also states how the land was divided in the days of Peleg. If you follow what would happen in a World-Wide flood, you'd have a think called an Ice Age. If you follow the time line between Noah and Peleg, the Ice Age could have receded to the point where the Eurasian, Australian, and American continents would no longer be connected. Remember that during this said Ice Age, the ocean levels would have dropped sufficiently enough for solid groud to appear between these continents (through Indonesia and the Beirring Sea).

How do you explain all the world's theories and legends about a Flood? I'm not talking about local flood legends. I'm talking about complete catastrophic, world-wide, flood legends. All of these legends talk about few survivors, escaping via a boat with a bunch of animals. Gilgamesh is one. If every person descended from one of three men, all of whom personally survived that Flood (Shem, Ham, and Japeth), it's not hard to see. This explains how Mayan, Aztecs, African tribes, and the eastern Asians all know about a world wide Flood long before Christianity reached them. Christianity began 2000 years ago. The Jews were limited to the Middle East. Abraham was around 2000 BC, where the Jewish nation began. The Flood was 500 years before Abraham where Shem could have (and would have) told the Flood account to Abraham and Isaac (maybe Jacob) directly. Again, this is not rocket science (which by the way is determined by committee according to my Thermodynamics instructor).

Now I have been accused of using one science field to prove/disprove another. I wasn't saying use physics to prove biology. I was using physics for a very simple answer. The Laws of Physics and the Laws of Biology do thier thing as so the Laws of Geology, Astronomy, and Chemistry. My point is that you can't use them if they aren't 100% reliable. How do these Laws come into being? Let alone the applications. And not only that, one of the Laws that evolution needs for its basis, the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, is constantly debunking what evolution assumes (that as time allows, life adapts for the better and eliminates 'unneccessary vestigular parts'). The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics states that everything is in a tendency towards disorder and it takes a mechanism to control the chaotic energy and make it useful. Only one such device exists in nature, chlorophyll. Adding energy alone does not help a system. We added a whole bunch of energy at Hiroshima. Did we get a city out of it? Or a spaceship? The only way you can add energy to a system and have it make things better is to have a device control that energy. Does your room make itself cleaner by leaving your TV and/or computer on? No, and yet following evolutionary thinking, you can come to this conclusion. It collects dust and quickly gets into a state of chaos. You have to forcibly add energy and control that energy to make it clean. There is so much more going on than just what the evolutionary theory states. And while I'm not an expert persay, I do know how to think. I've thought about both sides and the numbers support the Biblical account of creation so strongly (and I have given specific examples) that evolution (whose numbers not only disagree with each other, but also finds a hard time listing specific examples) not only looks bad, but just plain silly. Just try looking at the entire evolutionary picture and it simply doesn't make sense. But the Bible is still consistant even with the scientific knowledge out there. And that is another reason why I won't turn from it.

Well, I've been back through most of my posts on the old forum and this one as I have been saving many of our conversations.

How'd you get back there? I can't figure out how to view old posts.

And I think one would be hard-pressed to characterize my assertions as Dismissals or Mockery.

It gets tricky on here reading people's tone of voice, admittedly, although I recall a couple of instances (never many) where I detected a whiff of "your science is preposterous" tone, but like I said it's difficult to judge it on here and half the time I think I'm imagining it anyway (the pair of marbles rattling around in my skull makes my head sound like a giant maracca at times ).

But it's partly because I don't think God would Hoax us by planting Fake Fossil Evidence and Fake Radio-Active Dating Methods etc. etc. that I feel pretty darn confident in my perspective.

Why should He hoax us? God doesn't lie. We're just looking at the data in a different way, this is all.

And the verse you're thinking of is Romans 6:23.

x 100

I don't know why that one popped directly into mind. The one I was thinking of was "The wages of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life through Christ", and I'm not sure how I got em' switched around like that. I'm at work, which is where I always am when interesting topics pop up in here and the IT department has all religious sites blocked (like biblegateway.com) so I can't double-check where I normally do at home. I'm half surprised they allow me to visit NWeb for that matter.

I assume here that by "evolution" everyone here means a materialist system in which life evolved. A theistic system could just just as easily evolve--in fact the theory of evolution would be much more plausible (and likely) given a divine creator.

Alvin Plantinga has an interesting argument for the existence of God based on the theory of biological evolution.

Oh and for the dating systems to be wrong, all of modern nuclear physics would have to be wrong--and modern nuclear physics works.

TBG

Shadow, I found the link to the old forums in Kitty Fantasia's opening post on the Growing Pains Thread . Once you click on the link it will take you back to the last configuration of the old forum. Then you can search back by date to find the configuration that unveils old threads like this one.

I've been having a lot of fun finding them and saving them to my Word program.

And Yes, I have impishly implied that Creation "science" is preposterous (because I think it is ), but I have never ridiculed Faith in the Miraculous View of Creation because I think it stands on it's own.

Again, my main concern is that Science is Empirical, and Faith in Miracles is not. And trying to shoehorn one into the other diminishes both (in my opinion).

Fencer, when creatures are separated by environmental changes, they adapt separately to the new environments, this is one of the main ways speciation occurs (in a nutshell). You want evidence, we got fossils, genetics, strata, radioactive half-lives, skeletons of dinosaurs with hollow bones and bird-like structures, half aquatic/half land critters (some of which exist even today), Rodent like critters that eventually branched out into hominids, critters that evolved into bears/wolves/foxes, house cats-lions-tigers-leopards-cougars-all felines with a common ancestor--all separate species...Go back far enough you can find a common ancestor for all mammals...etc. etc.

Some dinos evolved into birds, others into reptiles and amphibians. Some very early critters branched into a completely different line called mammals, which were relatively minor while Dinos dominated the landscape for millions of years.

What all this means is that your characterization of lizards evolving into mammals and birds is a complete misunderstanding of the speciation process. lines of descent can be traced back to common ancestors which don't necessarily fit into one of the
descending lines of species.

Any good TV documentary (I've seen several recently) scrupulously details the evidence for whichever aspect of evolution is being discussed. Both academic and popular books also scrupulously compile the evidence.

So Fencer, please no more bogus anecdotes about how all the "experts" suddenly turn into Incoherent Fumblers faced with a room of skeptical Theology Students unable to answer one question . I'm not buying it .

Live Long and Prosper

Gandalf's Beard

I don't have a problem with dating systems as they are. The decay of Carbon 14 and other things is perfectly accurate. The problem I have with it is that when used as proof for evolution, they are making more assumptions. Such as, did things decay at the same rate throughout all of history? Here is one example: the erosion of the cliff of Niagra Falls. It is decaying at particular rate (I can't recall the exact numbers), and back in the early 1800's, (before Darwin), one scientist he calculated that Niagra Falls would have to be about 100,000 years old. This was the first thing that made the general populous tend to believe the earth was older than 10,000 years old. But there was one problem. That calculation made the assumtion it was always decaying at the same rate. What would happen to the edge of Niagra Falls in the event of a sudden Flood or an earthquake? What would happen if something happened that created a dam at Lake Erie (assuming I have my river direction right) and that dam burst (like Spirit Lake after Mt. St Helens)? Much of the decay rate would have happened much faster at that moment, before returning to its normal rate.

With Carbon-14, a dramatic event could cause the decay rate to go faster, which would then make the dating ages much younger. But not only that, we also base our calculations on the half life of Carbon-14 and make an assumption that the bones back then absorbed the same amount of Carbon-14 as they do now. Truth is, we don't know. But evolution makes the assumption that the absorbtion and the dacay rates were the same all that time back as they are now. But we know that a single disaster can change all sorts of things instantaneously. The problem isn't the scientific method. The problem is the interpretation and the assumption it is fact, when it didn't take all the factors into consideration.

A little while ago you were arguing that God's Physical Laws were consistent Fencer. Now you are trying to imply that they are inconsistent to suit your argument .

Carbon 14 is no longer the only means for dating. other radioactive elements with longer half-lives are also used. The evidence for the consistent nature of these half-lives has been demonstrated empirically. They follow certain Consistent Physical Laws that you say God Created (which I don't necessarily deny, despite some semantic issues).

Now, any good scientist can explain that the decay rate of a cliff is nothing at all like the quantum events involved in radioactive decay--they are two completely different processes. And as I said above, there are certain things scientists look for to demonstrate precisely how long decay rates of radiation last.

Again, if the physical laws governing radioactive half-lives are inconsistent, then God is Hoaxing us. And I agree with Shadow, such a concept is untenable, both for a person of faith, or person of Empiricism (or a person of both ).

GB

Now, ever heard what would happen to the tectonic plates if they are soaked in water? They do strange things like forming mountain ranges and valleys.

No, I haven't heard this. As far as I ever learned, mountains are formed when two tectonic plates collide (slowly) and the ways in which they collide form different types of mountains. Valleys, however, can be formed by running water over long periods of time, as well as by tectonic and glacial movement. How exactly does soaking tectonic plates in water lead to mountains in just 150 days? (The length of the Flood according to Genesis 8:3)