Proof of evolution in the fossil record

Scientific challenges to the beliefs promoted by the Brahma Kumaris so called "World Spiritual University"
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Proof of evolution in the fossil record

Post05 Sep 2011

Brahma Kumari leaders teach their followers there is no history beyond 5,000 year ago and, in fact, 99.99% of what we see and know dates no further back than 2,500 years ago. Before that, they claim, the world was a perfect heaven on earth.

"Informed" Western adherents often state that any weird, wonderful or prehistorical creature only came about 2,500 years ago after a series of nuclear explosions and war at the end of their supposed heaven on earth. That is to say dinosaurs existed over nothing more than a short period of perhaps a few decades and were radioactive genetic mutations of "heavenly creatures.

Evolution does not exist and carbon dating is all wrong, they go on. There is no proof, they claim. There is no proof of their high tech Heaven either, which allegedly starts around 2036 and will be created in the 40-50 years starting from 1986 - 1996 but that does not matter ... because God says so. Hell will exist again for 2,500 Years and we will all be back where we are today in 5,000 years time.

How does all of nature and the animals kingdom come about ... no one in the so called "University" can actually say. Publish scientific papers ...? You have to be joking! The Brahma Kumaris do not demean themselves to proving their beliefs ... it is so "un-royal" ... so Kali Yugi body-conscious.

In 2004, three fossilized Tiktaalik skeletons were discovered in rock on Ellesmere Island in northern Canada. At the time of the species's existence, Ellesmere Island would have existed on the equator and had a warm climate. They lived approximately 375 million years ago.

Tiktaalik were a genus of extinct lobe-finned "fish" from the late Devonian period, part of the Paleozoic Era spanning from 416 to 359 million years ago. They share with many features akin to four-legged animals and are an example of several lines of ancient "fish" which developed adaptations to the oxygen-poor shallow-water they lived in leading to the evolution of four legged animals.

They are an example of transitional species which paleontologists suggest representative of the change from fish such as Panderichthys (known from fossils 380 million years old), and early four legged animals, such as Acanthostega and Ichthyostega (known from fossils about 365 million years old).

Tetrapod footprints found in Poland and reported in Nature in January 2010 were "securely dated" at 10 million years older implying that animals like Tiktaalik possessed features that actually evolved around 400 million years ago.

The discovery by Edward B. Daeschler of the Academy of Natural Sciences, Neil H. Shubin from the University of Chicago, and Harvard University Professor Farish A. Jenkins, Jr, was published in the April 6, 2006 issue of Nature and was quickly recognized as a classic example of a transitional form.

Jennifer A. Clack, a Cambridge University expert on tetrapod evolution, said of Tiktaalik,
"It's one of those things you can point to and say, 'I told you this would exist,' and there it is."

After five years of digging on Ellesmere Island, in the far north of Nunavut, they found a collection of several fish so beautifully preserved that their skeletons were still intact. As Shubin's team studied the species they saw to their excitement that it was exactly the missing intermediate they were looking for.
'We found something that really split the difference right down the middle,' says Daeschler.

Taking a detailed look at the internal head skeleton shows how Tiktaalik was gaining structures that could allow it to support itself on solid ground and breathe air, a key intermediate step in the transformation of the skull that accompanied the shift to life on land by our distant ancestors.

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