If you are trying to explain the fossil, geological, and astronomical record, you might consider two hypotheses:

1) the details reflect the process that put these in place and current physical constants put the time for that to happen based on that record in the billions of years

2) somebody or something "God" for which we have little other evidence other than the world and universe created it all about 4000 years ago and made it look like a billions year project.

In the 2nd case, you take on the additional burden of explaing the existence and physics of God. Explaining why God would want to trick us is probably easier than explaining God's existence and physics in the first place.

I am reminded of Wg's statement "Believing you are in a sim is not distinguishable from believing in an omnipotent god (of any type)." Certainly, a sim would have the property that it would be much younger than it appeared to be, that the "history" built in to it would not be consistent with what actually appeared to have happened. Indeed, a sim seems to mean a reality which appears to be one thing but is actually another quite different thing created by powerful consciousnesses that are hiding their existence from us.