40,000 year old figurative painting discovered in Borneo

Scientific challenges to the beliefs promoted by the Brahma Kumaris so called "World Spiritual University"
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ex-l

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40,000 year old figurative painting discovered in Borneo

Post07 Nov 2018

Surely if your "God" gets one thing so wrong, and is so unable to explain it away ... on top of all the failed predictions of the End of the World ... it raises doubts about what else he is getting wrong and is clueless about? He may be the BKs' god spirit, but can he really be the supreme of all Gods?

Committed BKs don't care ... "don't think, don't ask ... just focus the experience" (don't be a dissident or you'll be ostracised and lose all your investment, just keep in the senior Sisters' good books to ensure your status).

The world's oldest figurative painting, relating to a hunting scene, has been discovered and dated in a Borneo cave. Scientists estimate it is approximately 40,000 years old and are tracking the development of art over 10,000s of years.

According to the Brahma Kumaris, there is no historical record older than 2,500 years and no history at all older than 5,000 years, and neither Borneo nor a non-vegetarian humanity existed at that time.

Who is right? Archaeologists and geochemists at Griffith University in Queensland, Australia or the uneducated Brahma Kumari leaders and their god spirit's utterances?

Evidence provided by the Brahma Kumaris so called World Spiritual University for their "Knowledge" ... zero. "Knowledge" is entirely faith based and experiential within BKism.

Bizarrely, otherwise intelligent, rational and functional Westerners gradually come to accept the Brahma Kumaris' "knowledge" as their basis for life changing decisions, seemingly able to throw out any reason, or compartmentalise various parts of themselves in order to comform to BK values, submit to BK values, and be accept by the uneducated leadership ... who have never been able to address such contradictory evidence to their theories and, even more bizarrely, refuse to confront their god spirit and demand explanations from him.

Instead they act as his apologists and explain away why "God" cannot answer such questions.
Faded and fractured, the reddish-orange image depicts a plump but slender-legged animal, probably a species of wild cattle that still lives on the island, or simply dinner in the eyes of the artist, if one streak of ochre that resembles a spear protruding from its flank is any guide.

Based on dates gleaned from calcite crusts in the Lubang Jeriji Saléh cave and others nearby, Aubert’s team has drawn up a tentative timeline for the progression of art in the region. They believe that rock art, which at first focused on large animal paintings, began between 40,000 and 52,000 years ago and lasted until 20,000 years ago when the second phase began. “At that time, humans start depicting the human world,” said Aubert. Whether the shift was part of the natural evolution of art, or came with the arrival of another wave of humans, no-one knows. The final phase of rock art may have began as recently as 4,000 years ago.
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Pink Panther

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Re: 40,000 year old figurative painting discovered in Borneo

Post08 Nov 2018

ex-l wrote:He may be the BKs' god spirit, but can he really be the supreme of all Gods?
Henotheism: The viewpoint/belief that there may be more than one god or deity, but only one of them is worshipped or considered highest

Abrahamic monotheism began as the tribal god being considered the right one for that tribe/clan. Hence the injunction of the Commandments in the Torah - "though shalt have no other god before me”, ie an otherwise superfluous idea if there were no other gods to be considered. There is also the well known description of YHWH (Jehovah) as a ”jealous” god.

Now, one's tribal god is also going to be considered the highest and best otherwise why would you not choose the highest or best over him?

We see the same tendency in Hindu religions where they bicker about which form or manifestation (idea) of god is the highest from whom the others emerge as temporary manifestations - Rama, Vishnu, Shiva, Krishna etc. (It never occurs to them that they may all be wrong and the real highest god is one they have not conceived of - or cannot be conceived of as the Muslims say).

Mind you, the thinkers in Hinduism do understand the concept of metaphor, symbol and archetype. It seems Lekhraj's grasp of these modes of thinking was limited.

Dada Lekhraj took this a la carte choice and elevation of tribal god to a new level (or three. The ideas changed more than a few times over the decades). He wove a whole new narrative that cleverly included casting the worshippers into the role of the deities.

Imagine if he had been more of a widely read and better educated scholar. He would have known how to weave in explanations that did not contradict the tangible evidence all around or the scriptures that he knew only a little of (but enough to get himself, and the rest of us who were equally uneducated in these matters, into trouble!).

That is, I would not say he or we were "unintelligent". It is the intelligent who are uneducated in any matter who are more gullible and better able to ”self-justify” their desire and ego based biases.
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ex-l

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Re: 40,000 year old figurative painting discovered in Borneo

Post08 Nov 2018

The Bhaibund Sindis were famous for - generally - not giving a sh*t about education, but only caring about business. Money making. They bought their "intelligence" in like a commodity, the Amils who ran the accounting and secret codified communications necessary for trading internationally, and avoiding dutyies and taxation.

Bearing in mind what has passed, and passes, as a "Brahma Kumari Museum" right up to this date, one has to wonder if he or the early they (Om Mandlites) ever stepped into a real museum in their lives? Nevermind a university laboratory.

Even the words 'museum' (as in "spiritual museum"), or "art exhibition" - both of which were reduced to propaganda and recruitment fronts - were prostituted by the Brahma Kumaris.

As with much else in his cultic religion, he took words with already existing values, and used them to sell his twaddle. Twaddle that really has no depth and did not develop that much over the period of his life ... the 5,000 years of time exactly being an example.

He never travelled, like other leading Modern Sindis of the time, including his nemesis the Mukhi Mangharam, to London or the US where he would have been exposed to the likes. Even those early BKs going for the first time to Japan in the 1950s would not have seen the likes, as it would have been in the Post-War recovery period. Perhaps that fuel "visions" - imaginings - of Destruction?

We remember how anti- reading newspapers he and they used to be let along the reading of science journals.

Could that also have worked to shut up the doubters asking such questions as when did the dinosaurs exist? India - outside of an educated elite - never quite had the same thing about "cavemen" and neanderthals, did it? Stone and Iron Age people still existed and exist in India ... the commonly held belief system was that Krishna and Rama all existed in some high tech reality, Krishna's last appearance being 5,000 years ago. With Lekhraj Kirpalani also adapted.

Was Janki, when she was in London, ever dragged down to the Natural History Museum, shown the dinosaur skeletons and ask what they were?

You would have thought that a responsible spiritual teacher would have made it their mission to check out and resolve ... rather than just repeat, "don't think, don't ask" and stop their students from questioning.


I remember notable "intelligent" and "educated" Western BKs making up stories for themselves, strictly outside of the BK canon, to explain away such anomalies, eg Julian Boles telling me how "Silver Aged" technology existed into the early Copper Age (2,500 years ago) and how the ex-deities used to go around in flying machines, shooting dead the dinosaurs and radio-actively mutated human beings (the Epic of Gilgamesh and Enkidu being "proof" of this).

He had the idea that the nuclear power stations that existed - according to the BKs - between 500 years BC and 3,000 years BC blew up 2,500 years ago and genetically mutated the humans and animals the "mini-Destruction" did not kill.

From memory, the idea that BKs Golden and Silver Age was nuclear powered did not exist in the early days either but was a later 'add in', presumably when nuclear power and nuclear weaponry became a big buzz in India.

You can just imagine them thinking, "Oh yeah, nuclear power is really famous. We'll have some of that too, and add it into our marketing speel".

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