This is the online edition of In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood
(7th Edition) by Dr. Walt Brown. The online version of the book is designed to be read online.
A PDF version or hardbound print version may be ordered.
Copyright © 1995–2008, Center for Scientific Creation. All rights reserved.
Click here to order the hardbound print edition of this online book.
70. Parallel Layers
Because no worldwide or even continental unconformity exists in earth’s sedimentary layers, those layers must have been deposited rapidly. (An unconformity represents a time break of unknown duration—for example, an erosional surface between two adjacent strata.) Parallel layers (called conformities) imply continuous, relatively rapid deposition. Because unconformities are simply local phenomena,a one can trace continuous paths, which sometimes move horizontally, from the bottom to the top of the stratigraphic record that avoid these time breaks. The sedimentary layers along those paths must have been deposited rapidly and continuously as a unit.b
Frequently, two adjacent and parallel sedimentary layers contain such different index fossils that evolutionists conclude they were deposited hundreds of millions of years apart. However, because the adjacent layers are conformable, they must have been deposited without interruption or erosion. [For an explanation of how conformable layers can have such different fossils, see pages 170–181.] Often, in sequences showing no sign of disturbance, the layer considered older by evolutionists is on top! [See “Out-of-Place Fossils” on page 12.] Evolutionary dating rules are self-contradictory.c