You are not nearly the first person to have raised this objection. This has been covered ad nauseam. There are two types of rebuttals.
Adam’s Genome is Unknown
Perhaps most important, your rebuttal relies on scientific error. We do not have Adam and Eve’s genomes. So your objection begs the question. How do you know that Adam’s genome had ERVs and pseudogenes? How do you know any of the facts you are putting forward to claim DGO?
The scientific reality is that we have no visibility of Adam’s genome. Any claim to the contrary is based on profound misunderstanding of the science. Until you can provide a compelling argument that this must be true, we do not even need to engage with iit.
For example, the story we read from genomes, is not read from Adam’s genome. It is read from our genomes, which may not even include any of his genome.
Created For An Intended Function
See for example this responses offered to @Brad_Kramer a year ago. I encourage you to catch up be reading the whole thread:
I don’t understand what you are saying here. If a tree is supernaturally created with one ring, or with fifty rings, it’s Omphalos either way. Can you explain your response further?
Omphalos is a speculative (and oddly specific) scenario purposfully constructed to dismiss overwhelming evidence for an old earth. Drawing analogy to a speculative bellybutton, the argument is that God created a world with “maturity” so it would be “immediately useful” and as a “test of faith”, and then we misunderstand that maturity as old age ( Is apparent age biblical ). The “Deceitful God” objection (DGO) argues that this means placing a false story in the evidence. This is most obvious in things like distant starlight (where we see, e.g., supernovae that could never have happened), and other artifacts that appear to have no reason deriving from the “immediate use of the world”. The “test of faith” argument is suspect too, and has generally speaking been roundly dismissed (even by YECs) even though there is no replacement “purpose” offered.
Even then, from a theological point of view, there may be some reasonable rejoinders that give better purposes than “test of faith”. The 100 Year Old Tree A Lutheran’s Artistic Tree and more recently John Sanford’s Designed Ambiguity. I do not necessarily endorse these points of view except to point out that this is under considered.
Regardless, the only reason to invoke Omphalos, historically, is to dismiss overwhelming evidence contradicting one’s hypothesis.
DGO has never been meant to imply that perceptions always match reality, especially our perceptions of miracles in the moment they occur. Applied the way you are using, DGO would be valid objection to Jesus creating wine from water, because this presents a “false history” the created wine, as if it used to be a grape, etc. DGO would be valid objection to the Resurrection, because it would give the appearance Jesus was never dead. DGO would be a valid objection to anything outside the natural order, and it puts an odd requirement on God to declare all His movements that we as limited humans have access to immediately without any confusion. DGO, therefore, really needs a clear delimiting principle, or it can be applied to just about everything, including valid science and just about anything we personally find surprising.
Because their is absolutely zero evidence for or against the de novo creation of Adam, it is not valid to equate it with the Omphalos argument or invoke DGO. The problem with Omphalos is not primarily about Adam’s development (which should be considered on its own merits), but rather the use of this speculative scenario (as I read it, Genesis says nothing about bellybuttons) as a reason to reject the evidence for an old earth. As @Jon_Garvey has often pointed out, a de novo created mature Adam would be essentially no different (in terms of DGO) as the water to wine miracle.
Perhaps there are valid objections to a mature Adam being created de novo, but those objections are distinct from DGO, and have to be considered on their own independent of the overwhelming evidence for an old earth
Criteria for Applying DGO
The DGO objection has become a very lazy objection to God’s action. The way you are using it, the DGO applies to Jesus turning water wine, and @jongarvey has noted:
As I said, I have no reason to suppose that God has ever made instant trees that look old. However, I do read in all four gospels that he multiplied two fishes into sufficient to feed 5000 people, and repeated a similar feat for 4000 later on. Now, like trees, you can age fish by counting the rings on their scales - what would you expect to find had you sorted through the baskets of fish skin left over after the miracle? Fish without the usual rings (in which case, they weren’t real fish), or evidence of God’s “cheating” by making instant fish look several years old?
Formally they are identical, so the applicability depends on what argument is being made. If it’s an argument about God’s character and deception, then the analogy stands: the miracle makes adult fish without a past, or mature wine without maturing time. He may, because his pruposes are his own.
The way I resolve this puzzle:
What you have you demonstrate @pevaquark, to raise the DGO here:
- the appearance of false history in Adam’s genome,
- that is unrelated to his intended function,
- keeping in mind we have no visibility of his genome.
You have not remotely met this standard, or demonstrated that this standard is not fair. This standard, to be clear, makes space for Jesus’s miracles and the Resurrection, but does not make space for the Appearance of a Young Earth. You can certainly try to propose better criteria, but it needs to survive that filter. The miracles of Jesus and the Resurrection have to pass, and the Appearance of Age (most likely) must fail.