The laboratory is as big as space, and the instruments are various types of telescopes. But your observations come with a preconceived bias against God and against Him having created things just as you see them. That causes you to believe that God could not have created the universe with apparent age. For example, your bias prevents you from believing that God could have created a star hundreds of thousands of light years from earth with the light already reaching earth at its creation. Your bias prevents you from believing that primates and humans have a better than 90% similar (DNA) genome by deliberate and specific creation of God, and yet they were created as separate and distinct creations.
I've seen this argument before from Young Earthers trying to defend their beliefs. I find it unconvincing in the extreme.
Only a particularly cruel God would give His children such amazing powers of observation and deduction, then deliberately plant falsehoods to fool them. That doesn't jive with any loving God that I've ever heard about.
Omphalism is indeed the only sane refuge of those who have seen the evidence for an old earth and biological evolution. It brings with it a number of philosophical problems however. It requires us to either see God as a liar, or that God is allowing other forces to manipulate the universe to give us the appearance of great age. It is also indistinguishable from an admission that the universe is of great age. What is the difference between an infinitely powerful actor making it seem as if the universe is old, and the universe actually being old? A difference which makes no difference *is* no difference.
Why would a deliberate creation include nonfunctional copies of one of the genes for the enzymes that are needed to make ascorbic acid?
See post 2824.
Why is this mutation found only in the great apes, including people. Do you think a non "biased" researcher would produce different data?!
One of the points here is that the 90% match doesn't say all that much. It's the details (in this case, DNA errors that are common to various species) that shout "common descent". The logic here is the same as that used by publishers of maps; they'll include a few deliberate mistakes to catch copyright violations.
Please read this often-linked-to essay for more details.