be seen as anything other that a creature of God and an instrument
through whom God chooses to work. So if Satan could rewrite the
geological record to give a misleading "apparent age" for the earth, the
responsibility is ultimately God's. Satan would be an "evil God" if
Satan were understood to operate independently of God."
This is virtually the same argument I would use that we also do not
operate in any sense independently of God, i.e. that we do not have
incompatibilist free will.
I might also hazard a guess that even if Satan somehow had freedom to
rewrite the geological record to give a misleading "apparent age" for the
earth, it might be simpler to assume instead that he influenced human
interpretations of the Bible so that they became inconsistent with an old
earth.
Don Page