The idea was named after the title of an 1857 book, "Omphalos" by Philip Henry Gosse, in which Gosse argued that in order for the world to be "functional", God must have created the Earth with mountains and canyons, trees with growth rings, Adam and Eve with fully grown hair, fingernails, and navels (ὀμφαλός "omphalos" is Greek for "navel"), and all living creatures with fully formed evolutionary features, etc..., and that, therefore, "no" empirical evidence about the age of the Earth or universe can be taken as reliable.