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That causes you to believe that God could not have created the universe with apparent age.

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.

I've seen this argument before from Young Earthers trying to defend their beliefs.

The omphalos hypothesis

The omphalos hypothesis was named after the title of an 1857 book, Omphalos by Philip Henry Gosse, in which Gosse argued that in order for the world to be "functional", God must have created the Earth with mountains, canyons, trees with growth rings, Adam and Eve with hair, fingernails, and navels (omphalos is Greek for "navel"), and that therefore no evidence we can see of the presumed age of the earth and universe can be taken as reliable.

We are not fooled. God created an adult male and female who never exited the womb of a human mother. God didn't fool us by not creating a womb, and then giving us the first man through it as an infant. You are unconvinced. It is not my argument. Adam had apparent age. He was created an adult. He tended a garden that had trees. Those trees may have included every age from a sprout, through a sapling, to an adult tree that, if cross-sectioned may have had 3,000 rings. And the "adult" trees and other foliage produced the first seed for the next generation of the species. God didn't fool us. He told us to believe His word and to trust Him.

Just for you scientists, He had life on the earth (Genesis 1:12) before the sun ever shown its first ray on it (Genesis 1:14). He did that special, just thinking of y'all. And He went on through His word to tell you that His ways are past finding out. Jesus Christ, Who was in the bosom of the Father from eternity (John ch.1) upheld the life in the dark by the word of His power (Heb. 1:3), and waited a day to hang the sun. Just for y'all.

You know, He would help your research, and show you more than you could ever imagine (in fact it would probably spook you), if you would just take His Word on it.

Depends on whether God was trying to teach them a lesson about getting too big for their britches; or whether the planted info was there for some other reason than to fool them; or whether some saboteur planted the fakes to estrange God and man; or any of a number of other circumstances you left out.

If you claim one must use rigorous testing, Occam's razor, etc., then it is inconsistent with your stated methodology to go around making ad hoc assumptions about God's behaviour or motivations...

Cheers!

...and Merry Christmas!