Stratigraphers today claim that chronostratigraphy and geochronology are one and the same, but this presents a problem; they have not found a reliable absolute chronometer for the rock record. To solve this dilemma, a new strategy has been proposed: define the timescale’s stages by the arbitrary assignment of each time-stratigraphic boundary. Above the Proterozoic, the beginning and end of each stage is either currently or soon to be represented by a "Global Stratotype Section and Point"—type sections scattered around the world. Below the Phanerozoic, each boundary is defined by a slightly different "Global Standard Stratigraphic Age"—an equally arbitrary numerical standard against which field radiometric dates can be correlated. As a result, the structure of the timescale has now been finalized, not by empirical science, but by the fiat pronouncements of the International Commission on Stratigraphy. Thus, the "scientific" discipline of stratigraphy diverges yet again from empirical science. This bureaucratic solution is a diagnostic symptom of the timescale’s erroneous core and a confirmation of decades of creationist critiques of uniformitarian history.