One of the ideas claimed as a way of explaining how an Earth that is 6000 years old can be dated at billions of years old and for explaining how we can see distant starlight is the idea that God created the earth and the universe with apparent age. There are, however, multiple problems with this idea. Please note, this is not to be confused with a mature creation, where God created things with what might be called functional age. For example, God would have created Adam and Eve as fully functional adults. The same would be the case for plants and animals as well. However, what the apparent age idea proposes is that God included needless artificial age.
There would be no reason for it
The first problem with this idea is that there is no reason for doing so. With functional age, God is simply bypassing fazes in an organisms or objects existence during which it could not fulfill its purpose. However, apparent age for the sake of apparent age has no purpose, other than the possibility of deception. There is no reason why God would put clues in the rocks that would suggest in old Earth, that had no necessity.
It excludes much of the evidence for the genesis flood.
Most of the rock layers for which this would be an issue are layers of rock that we would expect to have been laid down during the genesis flood. This includes the entire fossil record, it would also include radiometric patterns along with radio halos that would have been formed during this time. In fact, it is this extension of the geologic record into deep time that has led some Christians to accept the idea of a local flood, even though such a flood does not actually fit the Biblical description.
It makes God a liar.
The idea of a parent age pretty much assumed that God created a fiction both on the earth and in space of events that never actually occurred. This is actually a form of blasphemy because it literally makes God a liar, this is because it requires him to create a fictional account, including the fossils of dead things that never lived, designed intentionally to deceive. This is because the only reason for creating such a fictional reality is to cause deception among unbelievers. However, it would also tend to justify their unbelief in the process.
In conclusion, the idea that God created the world in the universe with apparent age, is a false notion that causes more problems than it is intended to solve. Not only is there no real reason for it, but it obscures evidence for the Genesis Flood. Finally, it is blasphemous by making God a liar who is deliberately deceiving unbelievers with a false narrative that goes against his word. It is an idea that simply allows somebody to be intellectually lazy.
