Fossils are dated from strata; strata are dated from fossils (Talk.Origins)

Claim CC310:


 * Fossils are used to determine the order and dates of the strata in which they are found. But the fossil order itself is based on the order of strata and the assumption of evolution. Therefore, using fossil progression as evidence for evolution is circular reasoning.

Source:
 * Morris, Henry M., 1974. Scientific Creationism, Green Forest, AR: Master Books, pp. 95-96, 136.

CreationWiki response:

What Talk.Origins neglects to say is that all of these dating methods are subordinate to dating by fossils. That is, whenever stratigraphic superposition, radiometric dating or any other dating method disagrees with the fossils, the date based on fossils always wins.
 * If stratigraphic superposition says a T-rex fossil is older than a trilobite fossil it is called an overthrust.
 * If radiometric dating places a fossil as too young or too old the radiometric date is dismissed as resulting from contamination.
 * Reference: New Age Data of Buried Peat Deposits From the Site "Fili Park".

This is by no means an isolated event. It happens all the time in geochronology.

Biologic evolutionary history, especially for Phanerozoic time, has given us not only the principal means of time-correlation but the basis of the unique progressive traditional stratigraphic scale.

Harland, W.B.; R.L. Armstrong; A.V. Cox; L.E. Craig; A.G. Smith; and D.G. Smith, 1990, "A Geologic Time Scale 1989," Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

This notion is accepted unquestioningly by evolutionists but absolutely no objective evidence is ever presented to prove it. In fact, this is exactly the same sort of circular reasoning that at the heart of the creationist criticism. When you use any fossil to determine rock strata, it becomes impossible to test the assumption that the fossils in question are restricted to certain strata.

While the geological column does predate Darwin's theory of evolution, the notion that all life evolved from a common ancestor predates Darwin, going back at least as far as ancient Greece. Darwin's contribution was to connect the idea to natural selection, providing a scientific-sounding theory. Ultimately, the geologic column is based on this idea of the time-equivalence of fossils, and when the geologic column was developed, pre-Darwin evolutionary ideas formed the basis for their time-equivalence of fossils. Today it is Darwin's theory of evolution that provides the basis for the time-equivalence of fossils. So since the time-equivalence of fossils is the basis of the geologic column it can be accurately said that evolution is the basis of the geologic column.

Fósseis são datados pelas camadas; camadas são datadas pelos fósseis (Talk.Origins)