Let's get really weird for a moment...
What if it were possible to go back in time* and have doctors give Adam a complete physical exam the day after he was created? Would they determine his age to be one day old? 20 years old? 30? 40? Since Adam was not created as an infant (i.e., did not follow the normal progression from a few cells to full adulthood), how would that affect his biological age?
Scientists have theories about how planets are born, and virtually all of them have in mind big balls of lifeless, molten rocks that harden and develop over millions and millions of years. (Naturally, they have no way of proving this or recreating it, but let's just give them the benefit of the doubt for now.) What if the earth wasn't "born"? What if it didn't go through the process one would expect a new planet to follow? What if the earth, like Adam, was created a bit older?
Just one of those things to ponder - like wondering whether Adam and Eve had belly buttons or not!
*Of course, the whole time travel thing wouldn't work. I mean if it were even possible, the doctors attempting to go back would probably be 15 billion years off in their calculations! ;-)
Scientists have theories about how planets are born, and virtually all of them have in mind big balls of lifeless, molten rocks that harden and develop over millions and millions of years. (Naturally, they have no way of proving this or recreating it, but let's just give them the benefit of the doubt for now.) What if the earth wasn't "born"? What if it didn't go through the process one would expect a new planet to follow? What if the earth, like Adam, was created a bit older? OK, but this generates some more questions...
If God created Adam & Eve in order to have someone to worship him, then why didn't he just create the rest of civilization by taking 6 billion lumps of clay & breathing into them? Why create an adult man & woman instantaneously, but then use a completely different mechanism to populate the rest of the Earth?
OK, so he wanted a solid Earth for Adam & Eve to live on. But why lay down all those fossils? Why lay them down in precisely such a way to make them look as if they were once living creatures who are related to each other in a genealogical tree spanning hundreds of millions of years? And why go to the effort of laying these fossils down in between layers of igneous rock containing several different radioactive elements - and their dauther elements - whose ratios are precisely what you'd expect them to be if they were layed down in sequence over 4.5 billion years? What does precisely-correlated ratios of radioactive elements vs. their daughter products have to do with the livability of the Earth?
Why do we see the light of stars & galaxies that are billions of light-years away? This does not make the heavens proclaim the glory of God - it makes them shout "old universe!" Why would God blink the universe into existence in precisely the way to make it look like it's 13.7 billion years old?
No, the only explanation for an old-looking universe is: God is playing a diabolically clever trick on us. IOW, God is lying to us. Now why would he lie to us like that?
This is the contradiction you YEC'ers must confront. Which of these two fundamentally contradictory beliefs are you willing to give up - your YEC interpretation of your holly book, or your lyin' eyes?
It seems people say things like "What if it didn't go through the process one would expect a new planet to follow? What if the earth, like Adam, was created a bit older?" not knowing what kind of theological mess they are creating.
Maybe the Universe only Appears Old
A popular young-earth theory often used (more in the past than now) is the claim that fossils, the universe, etc., only appear to be old. This seems to be the result of the reasoning, “O.K., we can’t answer the tons of old-earth evidences, so maybe God made things appear this way for some reason.” This appearance of age idea runs into a number of problems.
Most significantly is the fact that anything that appears to be old or has the appearance of age is, by definition, not really old. It only appears to be that way. Again, by definition, any such thing made to appear to be something that it is not, is to in fact be deceived by the person or being making it appear that way. Following this logic to its end would lead us to the conclusion that God is deceitful if he were in fact making things that appeared to be something other than what they are in actuality.
We cannot know the mind of God, but we know plenty concerning the nature of his character. Never is he irrational, untruthful or deceitful as made clear in verses such as Isaiah 45:19: “I have not spoken in secret, from somewhere in a land of darkness…” If you read the entire verse and the one preceding it, you will find that it is about God creating the universe in such a way that he and his message can be easily found. This seems contrary to suggestions that he fabricated the testimony of nature to appear to be something it is not. If God did do this, then how can we say the events in the Bible were not also fabricated? As you can see, appearance of age arguments open a Pandora’s Box of problems.
Appearance of age is also tantamount to relative thinking. If something only appears to be old, how can we know anything of the past? One could then say we were created yesterday with memories and physical aging. In other words, appearance of age leads to some ridiculous lines of thought, which is why most have abandoned it as a possible young-earth support.
Appearance of age proponents may claim Adam appeared to be old since he was created as an adult instead of an infant. This reasoning does not pay close attention to the method of Adam’s creation. Your age is calculated from the time you were born (we generally neglect the nine months in the womb for simplicity’s sake). A year after Adam was created, he had only aged a year. By normal reckoning, he was only a year old. Adam was created as an adult so he was mature in the sense that he was not a child, not in the sense that he had already aged twenty years because he had not been alive that long. It would be as if you were born as a fully gown adult. Had this happened, would you show signs of aging at birth? Would you already have wrinkles, clogged arteries and worn joints? No, being created as an adult means just that: Adam was an adult from the get go and did not start aging until the next moment. Adam did not appear to be an adult, he was an adult. He only appears to be old from our perspective of being accustomed to people growing from an infant. From his perspective, Adam had just started aging!
Some will claim that when Jesus turned water into wine (John 2:1-11) that this was an example of appearance of age since we generally think of good wine as wine that has been aged. But did it have to be aged or is “new wine” acceptable? The Bible seems to indicate that in the culture of the day that new wine was not necessarily inferior and sometimes preferred (Proverbs 3:10, Joel 1:5, 3:18, Nehemiah 10:39, 13:12). In modern times we would more likely agree with Jesus’ indication in Luke 5:39 that old wine is often better, but apparently old age is not necessary for good wine.
Lastly, some may ask, “If you cut a tree down in Eden, would it show growth rings?” It most certainly would. Genesis 2:8 states God “had” planted Eden, indicating that it had been there for awhile before Adam’s creation. Recall from Chapter 14 that Adam was not created in Eden and time may have passed between his creation and placement in Eden. Also recall that day three of creation details vegetation-producing processes that require more than a few days.
from
http://www.geocities.com/darrickdean/passage.html