This may be logically true, but it seems to me that it is just moving the goal posts. Instead of fighting over the physical age of the tree, the fight will be over which age is the true truth.
I do think this is worth investigating but my fear is that we lose too much in the process:
- Intelligibility - one of the main arguments for why Christianity can be helpful, intellectually, is that it provides a foundation for why science can even work in the first place. If you start saying that theology and science are addressing two different realities, that foundations starts to crumble.
- Coherence - yes, you get better coherence for one specific problem (age of the Earth) but I think you lose a some coherence of the whole. Having to introduce a paradox of physical and virtual age starts making the whole thing muddy.
- God is still a deciever - you still have to figure out why God would split truth (age of the tree) into a paradox that causes people intellectual trouble and also pits one group against another. This seems to be deceitful still, to me. Why give scientists a virtual age different from the physical age when they could just be the same? What purpose does it serve? The one I heard growing was that scientists were all atheists and needed humbling by God so He “tricked” them. I’d rather not go back to that line of thinking.
In the end, I’m not convinced saying “both/and” for age of the Earth is better than “either/or” but it could be potentially useful for those with doctrinal limitations. I just think it has its costs.