Excavations of the bodies have been going on for many years, you can find out more from the Easter Island Statue Project. It’s generally accepted that the statues were made sometime between 1250 and 1500 AD. There is controversy surrounding why the bodies are buried. Was it time and erosion, or were they buried on purpose? Aliens? The soil surrounding the bodies for so long has preserved interesting carvings (petroglyphs, or rock markings)..
This one below has a sailing ship carved onto it…
I feel sorry for those who don’t believe everything in the bible. Either you believe it or you don’t. I feel even worse for those who are naive enough to believe that everything ‘just happened’ and there is no God. Seriously?
There is a middle ground between believing everything in the Bible is the literal, fact-based, sole and only truth and believe there is no God at all and stuff just happened for no reason. Those aren’t the only choices, you know.
For example, you could believe that the Big Bang was God speaking the universe into being, and that it has run exactly as planned for billions and billions of years, and that we exist because we were planned for and wanted and loved and have been waited for all this time. Which seems much nicer to me than getting slap-dashed into existence a few thousand years ago and having all sorts of broken stuff need miraculous fixing and tweaking since then.
I think that science is a way to explore the place we live, and observe God more directly that through some book that was written by intelligent but flawed, fallible, human hands and has been re-translated and mistranslated ever since.
Why do people who believe so strongly in the bible not understand it’s origin? Learn the history of your book you hold so much faith in. Each writing was never intended to be combined together with the other. The bible is just a result of various popular writings in the 300s that goverment/kings/leaders/etc picked and chose from what they wanted in their book to be adopted as “official”. There were so many more things excluded from the book that a selective few chose to do. It is not God’s book… It’s the result of a political decision.
@Douglass K.
I respect your opinion Doug, but you seem very intent on shooting down my statements which is typical of people like you. Well then again I’m doing the same thing to you so that’s typical of people like me. So what the hell! I don’t really respect your opinion.
“People are “intent” on believing things that can be empirically proved.” Good point. We all want to know something for what it really is and have absolute and infinite proof. We all want to explain away the need for a god or intelligent design. That’s what it boils down to. We can’t accept anything but our own reason. If it can’t pass through our mental security check it isn’t worth considering. “I think, therefore I am.” That is the quote that best explains this.
“Not just your own subjective opinion.” It is their own subjective opinion that keeps them from believing. You have to get over yourself before you can be a Christian, that’s the requirement. You have to leave this preconceived notion of your ego and your individual worth at the door. It is something that God has to show you, I can’t do it enough justice. And I know that makes me a fool in your eyes. I’m not saying the Bible explains everything, it doesn’t. But it was written by men with the influence of God. Origin of the Species is a book written by a man who wanted to do away with the “Theory of God.”
“Nobody actually does that. If you see people getting frustrated, it’s with creationists, not creationism.” They do so! Watch Ben Stein’s “Expelled” movie! He makes laughingstocks of everyone! And the scientists never really answer his questions in a satisfactory manner. Because they can’t! They repeat themselves, they stutter over their own words, and they get nervous, and they eventually completely contradict themselves. Listen to Richard Dawkins’s argument. What a dick!
There really isn’t a whole lot of point in dragging this argument on. No one is going to be converted to the other’s way of thinking. Somewhere down the road when you get tired of empty fact searching and conclusions maybe try the God thing. Sometimes knowing everything is a real burden. Faith really cuts your work and stress in half I can say that right now. I am 100 times happier than the ones who apparently “know it all.”
In a million years when the apes start transforming into thinking, rational humans with iPhones and computers let me know.
Ben Stein’s “Expelled” was slanted and highly misleading. Or to put it more bluntly, riddled with lies. You might as well use Bill Maher’s “Religulous” as evidence that all people of faith are really stupid, simply because he hand-picked a bunch of not-very-bright people to interview and then edited the interviews to make them look even dumber. Dishonest documentaries that edit people specifically to make them look bad aren’t evidence of anything except the filmmaker’s own agenda.
“You have to get over yourself before you can be a Christian, that’s the requirement”
That would be nice. I can think of a whole lot of self-professed Christians who could benefit from that message.
“You have to leave this preconceived notion of your ego and your individual worth at the door. It is something that God has to show you, I can’t do it enough justice. And I know that makes me a fool in your eyes.”
No. Religious faith doesn’t make you or anyone a fool in my eyes. I simply called out your misrepresentation of (or feigned confusion about) people who see the world differently than you do.
“Somewhere down the road when you get tired of empty fact searching and conclusions maybe try the God thing.”
Been there, done that, bagged the whole idea years ago. Not saying that you or anyone else should follow in my footsteps, but the God thing didn’t work at all for me.
Tim said:
To me, “get over yourself” is equal to “be humble”, which from a Christian makes sense because Jesus taught this — from what I have gathered over the years. But perhaps I’m wrong on this.
However, how often do we see a “humble Christian” in these evolution v. creationism debates? So far, I’ve seen but one in the comment roll. Lore’s great comment on a path to peace between the two, and some (humble) common sense about teaching creationism (all creationism, so one doesn’t discriminate).
Why not discriminate? Because it is the humble thing to do. It is arrogant (i.e. opposite of “humble”) to presume you know the only creation story that is true, while all others are false. I mean, if you are going to open up the origin of everything to tales of magic, why stop at the Jewish one?
Humility and doubt go hand-in-hand. A humble person leaves open the possibly that there is a truth out there that they have yet to uncover. A humble person accepts that no person is perfect and all of us make mistakes. A humble person accepts that what we inherit from our ancestors is also imperfect and should be likewise doubted.
Arrogance and faith go hand-in-hand. An arrogant person believes they know the truth, because there is something special about him or her and the truth was bestowed upon them because of this specialness. An arrogant person believes that, although people are imperfect, somehow they have been exempted from this and been granted perfect knowledge. An arrogant person believes that the wisdom provided by their ancestors was perfect and god-inspired, yet NO BOOK SINCE THAT TIME has been written in such a matter again. They limit their “all powerful” being and say that he cannot have possibly influenced a more contemporary person to write “truth”, such as the Origin of Species. Or the Book of Mormon. Or the Quran.
Arrogance. It is the true root of all evil. Not money.
Tim said:
Tim, we don’t have to wait for that. The “apes” that were subject to the mutations and environmental effects that resulted in evolving larger brains, walking upright, and extensive tool use — already happened!
The apes that exist today, perhaps they could evolve into something different, again, if given new environments and time for mutations. The trouble is, many are pushed out of their habitats artificially and have little time to adapt. Or they’ve been moved to human habitats designed for some effect (e.g. labs or zoos). Oh, and this has only been happening for a few hundred years, not millions. Yet.
The first scientific treatment of dinosaur fossils came to light in the late 17th century. Before that, they were “understood” within the cultural norms of contemporary superstition. For example, the Chinese assumed they were dragon bones, while Europeans assumed they were the bones of giants destroyed in the Biblical flood. Even one of the first scientists to write about the fossils in 1677 continued that giant fantasy! It was 1699 when a colleague of Newton wrote the first credible report of dinosaur fossils.
So we’ve been continuing to doubt, question, and learn of dinosaurs for just over 300 years, and have re-shaped that understanding dozens and dozens of times. Because the early scientists got some things wrong, doesn’t mean you throw the whole thing out and go back to “God did it”. Instead it is a celebration of the Scientific Method that it has worked so well to refine the knowledge of these incredible creatures who perished so long ago.
Or, who perhaps evolved into the birds we see today. Evidence continues to mount that some dinosaurs had feathers, and may have been able to survive the extinction event better because they could withstand the cold using the feather’s insulation. And it was the smaller species that had feathers, meaning they could survive on the smaller portions of food available during that time. Mutation — environmental feedback — successful species — evolution.
It happened then, and evidence shows it happening now.
You can make your little glib ape comments all you want, and I’m sure they appeal to the humans-riding-dinosaurs set, but they pale in comparison to the actual data and evidence collected by scientists over the last several hundred years.
Ben Stein’s “Expelled!” is a propaganda film. Every single person interviewed has come forward with what they actually said and what Stein’s people changed and cut out.
Evolution is absolutely proven and observable, it’s too late to debate whether it happens, only how some of its mechanisms function.
You show so much blatant, ridiculous ignorance…scientists never even believed at any point that humans evolved from apes. That ISN’T evolution. Humans and apes are relatives with a shared ancestor. Apes will never evolve into humans. No species can ever be repeated, only certain logical characteristics – things in the sea develop fins or paddles, things on land develop legs or wings. No two species can ever be completely identical.
How can faith possible make you happier and less stressed? The gift of life itself should be all you need. Faith diminishes the value and worth of this world…people like you really are the saddest of all, I pity you immensely.
The carvings on the bodies represent tattos. The ones around their crotch are loin clothes…
That would be interesting! Is there a source you have to back this up?
To some, simply looking into outerspace and thinking “Wow, how does all this work and why isn’t everything in absolute chaos. What keeps Earth from being lost in the universe” is enough proof for the existence of God. If I could grab God, pull Him down here and handcuff Him to a chair and exclaim “I got em! Here’s God, I got proof beyotch!” I would. But I can’t and that’s the only thing that people like you will accept. So I guess there is no God Booyah Booyah. Problem solved. Woah! Life just got so much more meaningful.
Gee, sounds a lot like Thomas. But even Jesus had to “lower” himself to prove to Thomas what had happened. Jesus appeared to him, and supposedly said, “Because you have seen me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen, and have believed.”
I guess the rest of us are not as “blessed” as you. If Jesus could do it for Thomas, why not do it for us? Why not just appear to us all, which of course would be recorded on video and shared across the world. 6 BILLION Christians in the making!!!!
He did it to convert just one follower, Thomas — why not do it again and convert the entire world?
Maybe because people are supposed to have doubt. Doubt drives questioning, and questions drive seeking of answers, and seeking of answers drives accumulating evidence and facts, and accumulating evidence and facts actually creates knowledge and truth — i.e. “answers”.
Without doubt there simply is no truth. Faith is not “truth” — it is ignorance dressed up in a mantle of arrogance.
“Without doubt there simply is no truth. Faith is not “truth” — it is ignorance dressed up in a mantle of arrogance”
By your logic you are saying that even evolution is false. No truth? None? By saying there is no truth you’re pretty much defining your own truth by your own rules and that my friend is pure arrogance and ignorance. How is doubt humble? Explain that to me.
Thomas is not a role model. God doesn’t want us to constantly ask for him to prove himself. They did the exact same thing when Jesus was crucified. They said Save Yourself if You are the King of the Jews. Well He sure rocked their world.
“By your logic you are saying that even evolution is false.”
Only if I said there was no doubt in the Theory of Evolution — which I never said. It would have never improved since Darwin’s time if there hadn’t been some doubt, and I’m sure it will continue to improve as today’s doubts lead to new questions. I do think it’s the best thing going at this time, though…
“How is doubt humble?”
Very simple to explain. Doubt simply means you are capable of accepting that you don’t know something. There are many, many people on all sides of this debate, as well as other debates, who are incapable of being open to the possibility that they may have gotten something wrong along the way.
A humble person also respects others and their opinions. Again, leaving some doubt that their opinions may actually be better than the humble persons’.
My kids get a combination of public school and home school. I was explaining this to them just the other day that there is virtually no one in the world from which you can learn nothing. One of them was joking and even mentioned that couldn’t include a baby — babies don’t know anything.
I told her that this wasn’t true, and that learning isn’t always just listening to someone say something that they know. I explained to them that when they were born, they taught me a lot about love. That before them, I didn’t like holding babies, and their smell, and I didn’t know what to do with them. But once I held my own children, I knew what they needed — they “told” me what I need to learn.
Also, I’m not “defining my own truth” — saying that there is no truth without doubt says nothing about what is actually true. My assertion speaks to the process of reaching truth.
When you doubt you kick off a line of inquiry that exercises critical thinking skills. There are questions, research, debate, experimentation even. These activities yield data and observations — things that can be shaped into an answer — a “truth”.
And I didn’t make this process up — it has been around long, long before me. Really, even long before it was formalized into the Scientific Method. Some of the first procedural scientists, of course, were the ancient Greeks. But something like a more modern Scientific Method was used by the medieval Arabs. However, what we think of the process today is inherited more from Galileo, Newton, and their peers. In fact, Newton said, “To explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one man or even for any one age. ‘Tis much better to do a little with certainty, and leave the rest for others that come after you, than to explain all things.”
How’s that for humble? Accept your limits. Depend upon others. Ask for help.
But faith doesn’t do this. Faith does try to assert a “theory of everything”. It presumes no limits, not only doesn’t need others, but actively tries to convert others, and requires only the “help” of the invisible deity.
===
Thomas is a role model, absolutely. He wanted to use his brain and thinking ability to question, research, collect data, and come to a truth. And supposedly, Jesus provided the data for that experiment and Thomas came to know the truth.
I don’t think anyone is asking that God “constantly” prove himself. Just once, in some contemporary way, would be sufficient. All of His direct involvement in a book written thousands of years ago, yet He can’t make even one appearance since then??!!?
(Yeah, yeah, I know — Revelation. So, since the “second coming” is promised, still, nothing!??!? You know, the Old Testament had the prophecies of the original Messiah, yet God still supposedly made himself know in addition. He didn’t just say, “Hey, I’ll be coming around someday soon — just you wait!” Given how the Jews got an up-close-and-personal God, it hardly seems fair that the Christians just gotta hang out until Christ returns…)
And really, you can hardly hold up the mocking of Jesus as anything for this argument. I mean, if he was destined to die for our sins, why would he perform a miracle to save himself? Reveal his divine nature and convert some of the witnesses, but yet not make the sacrifice that is supposed to wipe out original sin, and all sins of Man to come? That’s hardly a bargain…
I feel both so sorry for people who work these sorts of digs and so envious. On the one hand, it’s got to be exciting. Easter Island! The academic competition must be fierce. On the other hand… outside academic circles, if I worked one of these, I’d say I was an accountant just to keep the UFO and Astral Projection folks off my case.
For a while I was trying to be an archeologist but like you said the competition is very fierce. The are not a lot of colleges that offer the degree and the pay is very low. The only way archeologist really make money is if they find something big. I would still love to do archeology because it is so fascinating. You get to be the first one to unearth something that has not been seem for hundreds or ever thousands of years. The best part is there are no screaming upset customers or clients to deal with. It is just you and your team in a quiet location beneath the stars and sky. There are still great mysteries buried in the earth’s crust. Trying to figure out the mysteries is one of life’s great joys for me.
Without getting into a debate about Christianity, Darwin, Noah, aliens etc, I just wanna say how f—ing cool these things are and I can’t help but think about that film “Night at The Museum”!
These are cool and beautiful heads with bodies. We could go on about where they came from but sometimes mystery is magic and I just appreciate that they’re there (-: thanks
omg they’re wearing thongs! ಠ__ಠ
Well, this is weird – aliens in one post and Creationism in the next.
Personally I’m seriously impressed with the bodies on these statues – they’re enormous! I could take a guess at why they’re buried, two obvious options come to mind:
1) Practical reasons – they were too heavy to stand upright, so the Islanders dragged them out to the right position then dug a steep pit and rolled the statues down into the pit until they were standing nearly upright, then used ropes to finish them off.
2) They probably buried their dead, like most civilisations, so burying the bodies of the statues would seem natural – half-buried spirits that are still watchful… It makes a poetic kind of sense.
As for aliens – I’m really not sure why we need aliens to explain any of this. We have written records of civilisations going back nearly five thousand years in Ancient Sumeria, and solid archaeological evidence placing the same people in the region for two thousand years before that. Humans are a wily bunch, I’m sure we could work out how to move around a few stones if we were suitably determined without the need for aliens. Just because they look old it doesn’t mean that they are actually any older than 500-1000 years. The weathering of rock depends on the type of rock (in this case a rock called ‘tuff’ which is quite soft by rock standards) and the type of exposure (in this case to a lot of salty sea air). You’d look pretty weathered if you’d stared out to sea for 500 years too! We have no credible reason to believe that aliens made these statues, and that the statues stopped being made/transported when the trees died out on the island suggests that there was a clear link to normal human technology.
… Which brings us on to The Great Flood. Unless the flood happened in the last 500 years (and I think someone should tell the Romans if it did) then the burial of the bodies has nothing to do with any Biblical flood.
Religion – I can see the appeal in abdicating personal responsibility for the world and saying ‘God did it’ but the hand of God really should leave marks, especially in the big acts such as flooding the entire world with rain (let’s ignore the effects of desalination on the ocean-dwelling fish for the moment). Answers in Genesis says that, according to the Bible, God could not have allowed mass-exiction events before Adam’s fall, and yet there is proof that at more than one time (be those times thousands or millions of years ago) many species have died out simultaneously. Like I said above, we have written records from 5,000 years ago in Ancient Sumeria. By most Creationist standards this is pretty close to the point of God turning on the lights. Beyond this time there are thousands of years of evidence of habitations, farming, and hunting… But I’m just going on the evidence others have presented to me.
We need to rely on the work of others with deeper knowledge then ourselves, then judge the value of what they say depending on their arguments. Just as some Christians tell me that the only way to God is through Jesus, Buddhists would tell me otherwise. Neither can present material that really corroborates their positions.
I am told that the Earth orbits the sun. I do not understand the evidence to support the argument, but I am told that the evidence exists and is flawless in its logic.
I am told the moon orbits the earth. Again, I don’t understand the evidence, but I am assured that it is excellent.
I am told that we have archaelogical evidence of people inhabiting some areas of the world consistently for thousands of years. I have seen a little of this, and I find it compelling.
I am told that God created the earth 5,000 years ago and the evidence is… A book of stories which I’m told is infallible despite the well documented excisions made by editors and emperors over the centuries. I can, and do, write stories. I wrote a creation myth once, which many people found a very calming spiritual tale. One person told me that it helped him through a period of drug addiction. This does not make my story (pardon the pun) gospel, it is simply a story with appeal to people who want to feel that there is order and unity in a universe guided by a benificent creator. While I admit that such a creator could exist, evidence of its acts, particularly the act of creating the entire world very quickly and then flooding it a while later, seems very scarce.
Again, Answers in Genesis says there is no evidence of transitional fossils or animals, when these do exist and new evidence is continually arising, such as the recent discovery of feathers on dinosaurs far too large to fly (suggesting they could have initially developed for warmth) and living fish in Australia with partially developed legs that walk across the seabed rather than swimming.
It’s sad that such beautiful monuments as the Easter Island statues have to be press-ganged into a Creationist world view that is constantly trying to find evidence to support itself – ‘they are buried, it must be from Noah’s flood! No, they are only 500-1,000 years old? Ah, the dating must be wrong and they still support Noah’s flood!’ This really makes no sense. Can’t we just admire their beauty without having to drag them into an obscure and unproven theological model?
Whether or not there is a God is a completely different subject than any religion or the “holy” book it follows. So those that word-up and drone on and on with what you think are clever ways of disproving the notion of after-life (and God) by pointing out biblical inconsistencies are being short sighted.
Proof? Can you design a study that can prove my IQ is between x and y? No, because if I don’t want you to know, I will foil your study. The scientific method is not designed for such a task as proving or disproving the existence of a singular, intelligent entity. So your demand for proof is really just a cop-out. That said, there is a lot of good evidence in support of God/after-life being reality. No, evidence is not proof, but its good enough for our murder trials. Should we release everyone in prison that we believe – through preponderance of evidence – to be guilty?
You can find this evidence in the Near Death Experience (NDE)phenomena. Many millions of people have died – meaning zero electrical activity in the brain – and come back (revived) with complex and lucid stories about, among other things, meeting God. Medical science, in many controlled experiments, has proven that all experience stops when detectable electrical activity in the brain stops. And yet, these people have these experiences. Not just a few, but many, many people.
What must I believe in order to dismiss this? I must believe that millions of people can hallucinate so convincingly that they are completely unable to even consider that there experience may have been “all in the mind”. And also, I must believe that complex experiences can happen AND be remembered while the brain is – by scientifically established standards – dead. So, I make the unsupported claim that the NDE is just a big delusion. I am theorizing that, after health is normalized, 1) about 10 million people lack the ability to determine what is hallucination/fantasy and what is real; and 2) the dead brain generates and remembers elaborate, lucid fantasies. That seems like a rather extraordinary assumption. Where is the extraordinary evidence for such a claim? Or as most skeptics demand, “where is the proof”?
And this is not even taking into account the amazing discoveries of modern physics. Physics seems to be on the verge of proving that reality is very different than what our senses tell us it is. No, I didn’t suggest that this proves anything. But if you don’t think it is another feather in God’s hat, I’m accusing you of bias.
Nobody here owes you anything. So don’t ask for proof. Go do the research for yourself. Read the actual documentation from the sources. I’ve read all the skeptic literature and they all cherry-pick to support their bias. What if I’m right? Would it be a fantastic enough truth to be worth your time? It was for me. I’m an ex-atheist. The extraordinary evidence is out there, but nobody is going to serve up on a silver platter for you.
I don’t think you understand how burden of proof works. You see, the burden of proof falls on the person making the positive claim.
For example, If one says unicorns exist, it’s that’s persons job to supply positive proof, or positive claims. You then test those clams for accuracy, via observation or experimentation.
A lot of religious people tell atheists to prove God’s non-existence, which is impossible, as you cannot prove a negative. Instead, all you can do is disprove any positive claim by showing a lack of positive evidence. IF someone cannot be proven to exist, then by the nature of the null hypothesis, you can treat it as not existing. Hence why we discount the existence of unicorns or other mythological creatures.
I am not arguing that God cannot possibly exist, but I am arguing that it is not possible to support the idea that the world was created 6,000 years ago and that there was a global flood, covering every landmass, 4,300 years ago because we have written records from before that time.
There are no people lying next to dinosaurs in the fossil record and there is no evidence of humanity ever having co-existed with dinosaurs, as many Creationists argue must be true.
The amazing thing about the scientific approach to the world is that if something is proven incontrovertably true then scientists change their minds and change their theories. Look at the LHC experiments – they are searching for a particle that has been hypothesised to exist for 100 years. Vast swathes of science are built on the assumption that this particle must be real… But they are prepared to admit that if they cannot find evidence of it then they, and their theories, are probably wrong. Science looks at the world, makes a hypothesis, and then tests it. If the tests support the hypothesis then it can progress to being a theory, i.e. a model that works consistently enough to be tested in multiple ways and still appear to be true. If evidence disproves the theory totally then the theory will be dismissed, but more commonly new evidence means only a small aspect of a theory is revised and new data fits with the other evidence in the improved theory.
Creationism starts the opposite way around – looking at a story and trying to find evidence to support it. This results in dismissing any evidence that disagrees with the story and jumping on small questions that a theory, that is otherwise fully substantiated, cannot yet answer. When soft tissue was found in a fossil, Creationists said it was definite proof of Young Earth theory, whereas the scientist involved (who is also a Christian) knows that the rocks around the sample are dated through isotope analysis to be 68 million years old. Instead of saying ‘this is proof of the Bible’, she said ‘this is proof that we don’t understand the processes of decay and preservation correctly’. ( http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/dinosaur.html?c=y&page=1 , in case you’re interested.)
Religion is based on stories and belief. Science is based on observable evidence. I have no problem with people believing in God, but when people start trying to undermine education and research, ignoring evidence that doesn’t fit with their stories and then preaching these things like they are facts… That annoys me.
If God exists and wants us to have belief in it, then why would it prove itself to exist? What would be the point in asking for belief if we could simply look at the evidence of God?
The funny thing about history in all the things that have ever been investigated, there is no incontovertable evidence for the supernatural. If there were it would then be renamed ‘the natural’.
Do I think that NDE’s could be artificial memories, some organic chemical hallucination caused by oxygen-starved brains being kick-started after years of being told about divine beings? Of course I do. Tests have recreated these sensations… Perhaps the recreations are actually people having a conversation with God under test conditions. Maybe they are. The problem is that we can’t know for sure.
God might exist, God might not exist. Either way, this world is a wonderful place and we should investigate it with open minds and hearts, not prejudging based on what we have been told, but seeing what can be studied. If you wish, you could call this learning about God’s creation. In Islam, it a central responsibility of man to care for the planet. We can do this by learning more about it and not using quack-science to twist our understanding of the environment.
A nice example is the arguement that there was an ice age 4,000 years ago (http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/tj/v15/n3/greenland ). Again, we have older writing then that time and archaeological evidence continuously through this period of history… Where is the evidence to support the ice age throughout the rest of the world? By picking and choosing, and not providing a unified scientific model, they are undermining tools we have for creating global climate models. These models are essential to the lives of future generations – they will be living with the decisions made based on those models.
Teaching unjustifiable models of science is a risk for everyone, which is why I get defensive about these topics. Religion is fine, if you want it, but when it becomes a threat to the future of the species then you have to take a stand.
The answer to your question is quite simple because you ascribe the NDE to the wrong timeframe!
You assume that the experience occurs when the brain is scientifically “dead”. Why?
Why could not the “experience” have occurred in the milliseconds before activity ended and been properly stored away in the brain’s memory areas — which, being the last thing experience before “death”, is also what the person immediately remembers upon revival.
You know, like stoping a DVD playback in a machine that records the last played position in stable memory, turning off the player’s electricity, then restarting the player and the playback — right where it had left off.
We know how electronics work and can understand how to do this in a DVD player. Perhaps when our medical technology advances enough we will understand brain memory storage as well, and will be able to study this NDE phenomenon to explain just were these “memories” come from.
But the difference between a humble person of inquiry and an arrogant person of faith is that the person of faith will simply say, this cannot be explained by what we know today, so “God did it”. The person of inquiry will, when faced with a lack of knowledge, say, “time to learn something new!”
And “so what” to big revolutions in the study of physics! Science can be revolutionized — that is the very beauty of it! And is in no way license to discredit the Scientific Method and go back to “God did it”.
As I posted elsewhere here, the early scientists got a lot wrong about dinosaurs! But does that mean we go back to what the Chinese believed — that they were dragon bones?!?! Or what the Europeans believed — that they were the bones of giants left after the flood!??!?
No! A thousand times “no”! Of course scientists learn new things and refine old theories — even to the point of throwing old ones out! That is how it works.
Please, tell me how theological inquiry works? Does it not go something like, “question not God, for He works in mysterious ways”? Or, “it’s all part of His great design”?
Don’t care for the debate – great photos though.
Dumb question…but I have to know and I don’t have the mental energy to read the above posts.
Are the heads& bodies one singular stone? Or a hardened mass mixture dried and carved on?
That’s all!
Thanks!
I think they are one big stone.
You are right. Here is a photo of one stone that was never fully carved out from a quarry on on the island:
The quarry has many incomplete Moa. They vary widely in size and indeed it has been known since the earliest discovery of the island by western civilisation that some Moa do indeed have bodies.
It is thought that the tribes may have competed with each other to construct their respective Moa’s. So the larger and more successful your tribe, the larger and complete a Moa you were able to transfer from the quarry to the coast.
Woah. I found something interesting on the Internet. And that’s what happens when you make a joke about slacklining on Rapa Nui and then google it…