This discussion is going on elsewhere as well. An idea which originated there (pm me for the link) is the idea of an invoice.
here is the idea:
the context is the water into wine miracle at the wedding in Canaan.
the wine was not accompanied by an invoice from Gallo stating it's origin, age and wine type. it was UNLABELLED, uninvoiced.
Creation on the other hand is invoiced, it contains literally millions of little dated invoices that say: this process is historical and can be dated to X. or this tree has been here in this place and growing for 4K years.
or
The isotope ratios at Oklo amount to a sworn certificate that the Earth is at least 1.5 GYears old; yet the specific combination of deposits with a high uranium content and lots of percolating water (which was necessary for the natural reactor to burn) is not a necessary part of a mature Earth.
note the idea of necessary part.
this is the key element of apparent age, of the omphalos problem.
is a belly button a necessary part or it's presence a sufficient condition to prove a history?
This is the issue of necessary to, or contingent history. Each of us has a particular specific history, a journal of our lives would act as an invoice certificating who we are and what we have undergone in our lives. But that history is not necessary to being a human being, it is specific to and has expressed contingent conditions.
a scar on Adam's knee and memories of falling out of a tree at 10 and being comforted by his mom is a false memory if Adam was created a mature man.
the scar is an invoice, a certification of a history that was not a necessary condition for being a man.
a Gallo invoice specifies the vineyard that the wine came from, it is not generic wine but specific wine with a history, with scars.
this is the key element that the argument revolves around. The Creation is certificated by God to be 14B years old, to have created it in the year 4044BC is deception, false memories, forged invoices, making us "brains in a vat" and subject to Decartes demon. Trouble i am not prepared to deal with epistemologically when the solution is simply to believe the book of works and modify Usshers interpretation of Genesis as not being what God what us to believe.
now the issue is if miracles issue invoices.
if a YECist 6K years ago creation is invoiced by Gen 1.
that is an interesting idea and is answered "of course" by YECists and others who would address specific scientific and historical questions to Genesis, such as "how old is the earth?"
....