In his famous autobiog Father & Son [1907], Edmund Gosse tells us that his father, faced with anti-creationist discoveries of such as Darwin & the geologists in the Victorian period, pronounced that, when God created the world in 4004 BC, he put the fossils in the rock to tempt such people to blasphemy - tho to what end & with what purpose I don't think was specified.

I just wonder if pete [& Iona, for that matter, if still anywhere around - I wonder what happened to her?], would consider such a contingency a likelihood...

~M~