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God created us and put fossils in the ground to make us think that the Earth was far older than it is.

I like to use this arguement in my mind to justify my problems with religion and science. If there really is an all powerful God, what would stop him from being able to create a Universe that to us mortals appears to be 16-20 billion years old?

And again, if your universe contains an all powerful God who would intentionally lie to His followers, is this not...

A) A vastly smaller God than the one who died for our sins, or...
B) A very poor way for Him to reveal his eternal, honest nature to Scientific People, who will merely use this blatent disception to decide that Christianity is no more than a myth.

I believe Old Nick, Mr. Scratch, the Dark One is the only one I have heard referred to as "the Father of Lies", and I wouldn't want to get put in the pen with the Pharasees who tried to ascribe the works of God to the devil...nasty results I hear! ;)

If there really is an all powerful God, what would stop him from being able to create a Universe that to us mortals appears to be 16-20 billion years old?

There is nothing to stop God from doing such. I never claimed there was. It's just that you then have to choose one of the following:

1)You accept the Earth as being 6K years old and reject any and all benefit from science, since God is fooling us by misrepresenting the world/universe around us.

2)We do not know, nor can we begin to fathom God's design of the universe. We have a creation story, a parable like many of Jesus' parables, that fit well into the thinking of men 4 thousand years ago. God gave us a brain to understand the world around us and a natural curiosity to explore. We are doing such and learning much about God's creation. But they are not mutually exclusive, as some here would have you believe.