Derech – I think you may have slightly missed the point of my question. HKB’H does not do things for no reason, and therefore would not have put anything into the creation for no reason. Therefore it is valid to ask what the point of the fossils/dinosaur bones would be. The dating methods normally used were not invented, but discovered, i.e. they use rules that HKB’H put into teva, and, as the Rambam writes, this is the way in which HKB’H designed the world to act optimally. Therefore, the question can be asked why HKB’H put into the creation things that would, according to the way that He has designed the world to run, be wrongly interpreted. For whose benefit? Now, I hear your Sifsei Chaim but I don’t understand what dinosaur skeletons have to do with physical manifestations of prior spiritual realities any more than, say, Alpha Centauri. And the deer skeleton analogy doesn’t work either – HKB’H created physical deer with physical skeletons that are left when the deer die and all the flesh has decomposed; they were not placed, fully formed, into creation as simply skeletons of things that had no physical reality. Deer skeletons do not violate the derech hateva, whereas dinosaurs would. And much can be learned about the world and how it runs from said deer skeletons, which would help enhance our appreciation of the chochmas haborei. Not so the dinosaurs, because, according to this theory, they never actually were nivro.
I think also my comment about learning rishonim might have been taken a bit sharper than it was intended. It was not an ad hominem attack, simply a direction to marei mekomos. If offense was taken, I apologise. However, I do not know why you had to resort to the Seder Olam, a sefer of disputed authorship or even age (it was definitely around at the time of the Rishonim, as Rashi quotes it, but may be of Gaonic, Ammoraic or Tannaic authorship), when you have perfectly good Rishonim who do learn the Shita Alfei as referring to the age of the universe (e.g. Rashi, Rambam), all I was pointing out was that there are others who don’t.
I’m not sure, however, that your solution isn’t tantamount to admitting to a billion-year-old creation anyway. If you have a ‘klolus’ of the shitta of the Sefer HaTemunah (or Bahir, or Midrash Yovelos, or whatever) then you have a physical existence that is that old, whatever ‘protiyusdike’ epicycle is referred to in the other shittos still takes place within that creation. Unless, of course, you refer to the theory that the universe expands until it grows too large, so contracts to a minute point (the Alpha Singularity), leading to another Big Bang and the whole cycle repeats endlessly. Which is just a fancy modern version of the ‘Olom Kadmon’.
I don’t think that here is the most sensible place to go into detailed discussions of Darwin’s beliefs (and, yes, I know I brought it up in the first place, but it wasn’t meant to evolve into something like this…), but suffice it to say he was not an agnostic b’shitta, but someone who struggled with his faith (as your quote I think demonstrates). Agnostic simply means ‘no knowledge’, and though Darwin did admittedly grow more and more uncomfortable with, and became more unsure of, his faith he never actually rejected it as far as I can tell from what I have learned. If this is not the case, then I would be happy to admit to it. However, as I think I pointed out, that has nothing to do with dinosaurs or old universes.