I have a hard time believing the Bible is this cut and dry. If you are taking the rivers theroy at face value then how do you explain the Angel standing with a flaming sword outside the gate of Eden? Which was stated in Chapter 3 verse 24. If this was 100% true to the point of Eden being an earthly realm, we would be able to see the angel to this day protecting the garden.
Also there was a great flood that happend after this creation which would have surely destoryed any form of geography that we would understand before that flood. There is no way that rivers would have returned to where they were or that Noah would have landed in the same place after floating for that long.
YES........I take the rivers listed in the Genesis as actual rivers that existed then and some are still here today. I believe that because quite frankly, I am not smart enough to clime any better explination of the Genesis account.
I am first, a "literalist". In other words, what God said is what God meant to say, NOT what I fail to understand.
Now, how do I explain the angel standing with a flaming sword outside of Eden?
Well, the truth is that I do not need to explain it, I only need to believe it my brother.
American Standard Version
So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden the Cherubim, and the flame of a sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.
Douay-Rheims Bible
And he cast out Adam; and placed before the paradise of pleasure Cherubims, and a flaming sword, turning every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.
Darby Bible Translation
And he drove out Man; and he set the Cherubim, and the flame of the flashing sword, toward the east of the garden of Eden, to guard the way to the tree of life.
Those comparisons immediately tell us that the verse is well translated just as it stands.
The point is, in a way of explination that you asked for, is that according to verse #7, Adam and Eve were now like God in that they knew good and evil. Their eyes had been opened to the light of their own sinfulness. They knew good but were unable to do it, they knew evil but were unable to resist it. That my friend is what the Calvinist's would call TOTAL DEPRAVITY.
Now, as for the flood.......I am not sure what your question is as I do not find one in your comment.
Your comment was.............
"There is no way that rivers would have returned to where they were or that Noah would have landed in the same place after floating for that long".
Well, of course that is not true now is it. Science itself proves that water always finds the course of least resistance.
Once the waters receded, then the natural flow of water in all rivers would return because it was God who blocked those rivers in the 1st place...(Gen. 8:2)
Now the Scriptures do not say that the Ark returned to where the same place where is began to float.
YES. The receding waters would very definitely change the geography of the earth. What is the point????