For one thing, I think it is pretty cool that you read the article and posted an excerpt from it here. . . Nevertheless, the Creationist view is based on the Bible, and the biblical record of Genesis 1-2 is foundational for creationist science. Not too long ago there was a thread discussing the very issue of apparent age, which you brought up. However, we are entering theology when we begin to discuss apparent age and the creation of a mature creation as interpreted from Genesis 1-2. For a YEC, this is not a problem. For evolutionary-minded individuals, I can see how they might have a problem with it.
Dr. Snelling, with whom I've corresponded with a few times, is not desperate at all. He is simply relating his observations to what we see in the Bible. He is standing on the truth of God's Word as irrefutable, accurate, and inerrant: he is trusting the Word of God in light of what we observe and making sense of it.
I should think that it is very much the same as an evolutionist views the data and makes sense of it based on his/her worldview of deep time and purely natural processes. YECs put the Word of God first before the word of errant, fallible, corrupted, and sinful man. If it is in-line with the Bible, it is embraced. If it is not, the obvious conclusion is that there is an error on our part, not God's. I do not expect everyone to accept that explanation, but that is the case.
Let me try to explain my understanding of Omphalism. The hypothesis that God created the universe with the appearance of age has the advantages that it is able to explain everything that we observe, that it works according to laws, and that one can make predictions from it; one can predict that every observation will confirm the appearance of age.
The hypothesis has the disadvantage that it is not scientific; it cannot possibly be tested, and there is no conceivable observation or experiment that could disprove it. My only response to such a universe would be awe at God's skill and artistry in producing such a perfect simulacrum of an ancient universe.
Omphalists often say that God created Adam and Eve as a mature man and woman, because they would not have been able to survive if they had been created as children. This reminds me of a very silly argument about Shakespeare's play
The Tempest. If Prospero and Miranda had been living alone on the island since Miranda was a baby, how did she get new clothes as she grew out of her old ones? The answer was that if Prospero was a great magician who could raise a storm capable of sinking a ship, he could presumably use his magic to produce new clothes for his daughter when she needed them! (I said that it was a very silly argument.)
Presumably, if God could make a whole universe in six days, he could have created Adam and Eve as new-born babies and then have miraculously sustained them until they were old enough to fend for themselves. (This is the sort of thing that literary criticism and theology bring us to.)
To get back to the subject under discussion, after Snelling has shown that the isotopic ratios in meteorites indicate ages of 4.55-4.57 billion years, he asks whether there is physical evidence of radioactive decay that would produce the observed quantities of daughter isotopes. He concludes that there is not.
we have to conclude there is not good clear physical evidence that a lot of nuclear decay has occurred in meteorites, certainly not ~4.5 Ga worth, and thus not in their parent asteroids either.
From this he argues that God put the daughter isotopes in the meteorites at the Creation.
Dr. Snelling here appears to think that he is cleverer than God, that he is clever enough to catch God out. God is clever enough to provide meteorites with the right isotopic ratios to create the appearance of an age of 4.55-4.57 billion years, but He was not clever enough to provide the evidence of radioactive decay that would make the illusion perfect, the evidence that should be present if the meteorites were really that old. In other words, God has slipped up, and Dr. Snelling has caught Him out in a mistake. Do you, as a Christian, think that this is likely?
