Omphalos hypothesis

The Omphalos hypothesis was named after the title of an 1857 book by Philip Henry Gosse in which he argued that in order for the world to be "functional", God must have created the Earth with mountains, canyons, trees with growth rings, Adam and Eve with hair, fingernails, and navels ("omphalos" is Greek for "navel"), and that therefore no evidence we can see of the presumed age of the world can be taken as reliable. An extreme version of this idea is that the world was created ten minutes ago, complete with all of our memories and records and fossils. The idea has seen some revival in the twentieth century by modern creationists who have extended the argument to light which appears to originate in far-off stars and galaxies.