“The intelligent layman has long suspected circular reasoning in the use of rocks to date fossils and fossils to date rocks. The geologist has never bothered to think of a good reply, feeling the explanations are not worth the trouble as long as the work brings results.”
O’Rourke, J. E., “Pragmatism versus Materialism in Stratigraphy,” American Journal of Science, vol. 276
Another evolutionist, Niles Elderidge, put it this way :
“Paleontologists cannot operate this way. There is no way simply to look at a fossil and say how old it is unless you know the age of the rocks it comes from. And this poses something of a problem: if we date the rocks by their fossils, how can we then turn around and talk about patterns of evolutionary change through time in the fossil record?”
Eldredge, Niles, Time Frames: The Rethinking of Darwinian Evolution and the Theory of Punctuated Equilibria (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985), p. 52
How many people are aware that geologists use circular reasoning to date fossils and rock layers ?