The Horizontal Falls are one of Australia’s strangest natural attractions, a unique blend of coastal geography and powerful tidal forces that visitors pay big money to see up close.
But all that is about to change.
Located at Talbot Bay, a remote spot on the country’s northwestern coastline, the falls are created when surges of seawater pour between two narrow cliff gaps, creating a swell of up to four meters that resembles a waterfall.
For decades, tours have pierced these gaps on powerful boats, much to the dismay of the area’s Indigenous Traditional Owners, who say the site is sacred.
It’s not the only reason the boat tours are controversial. In May 2022 one boat hit the rocks resulting in passenger injuries and triggering a major rescue operation. The incident led to calls to halt the tours for safety reasons.
Although the boat trips have continued, the concerns of the Indigenous Traditional Owners have now been heeded, with Western Australia, the state in which the falls are situated, saying they will be banned in 2028 out of respect.
Because if you accept it without proper argument (and that is what I take “conclusion” to mean) you’re not doing science. It would not adhere to the scientific method. I think you should stop trying to lecture me about it.
Indeed, you can take another stone and it will also drop to the ground: Testable, falsifiable. Things, indeed, do fall down. Nature indeed replenishes from the sacred site, that’s also testable and falsifiable, they probably did test it at some time and then went “ohfuckohfuck”. As one can be directly observed it’s physical, as the other can’t it’s spirits. Further investigation then could conclude that the spirits are actually tiny stuff you need a microscope to see, but the people don’t have microscopes also that wouldn’t mean that it’s not spirits, but that spirits are tiny things you see with a microscope: Why change the term?
This not changing of terms also has precedence in western science btw: “atom” means “undivisible thing” (from Ancient Greek ἄτομος, “I cannot cut”). Does it mean that physicists are not able to tell neutrons, protons and electrons apart?
Nothing, whatsoever, about not even having a concept of materialism precludes one from employing the scientific method. Science is not a set of beliefs or insights, it’s a method. And, as you yourself said: Everyone can do that. I’m saying: Just because a tribe didn’t do as much science as Europe from Antiquity to Modernity you shouldn’t assume that they’re talking mumbo-jumbo. They may know shit about quantum mechanics they certainly know a lot about how their environment works.
Another example would be the agriculture of Australian Aborigines, which is so far-out when it comes to techniques that it didn’t register as agriculture to the settlers, they thought Aborigines are hunters and gatherers. Sure, they hunt and gather, but within an environment they had shaped such that stuff grew where it was convenient, and animals lived were they were easy to hunt. You don’t get to that level of ecological engineering without understanding things and interrelationships, that means they did science, even if your tunnel vision can’t recognise it.
Except spirits doesn’t mean tiny physical things, it refers to things outside of the physical that cannot be measured or quantified by definition. If spirit was just their word for biodiversity that would be fine but then we’d be talking about sites being biodiverse and not sacred because we’d have established that sacred isn’t the correct translation. You keep repeating the same baseless justifications for spiritualistic and religious practices to be treated like some kind of science but they aren’t and never will be. They are ritualised behaviours that are successful only because the competing alternatives lead to the collapse of the populations practicing them and would fare less well in alternative environments. We are done here, there is nothing more productive to be gained from you repeating the same misunderstanding of science.