ARCHAEOLOGISTS HAVE BEEN ACCUSED OF ROBBING GRAVES AND DISRESPECTING THE INDIVIDUALS WHOSE BONES THEY DISTURB IN BURIAL SITES. Archaeologists Exhuming The Bones Of The Dead May Seem Immoral And Unethical To Some People With Distorted Worldviews That Do Not Incorporate The Reality That The Dead Are Lifeless. Christians note that Jesus said that the dead ought to be left for the dead, as they have no place among the living.

How is it ethical for archaeologists to dig up and disturb human remains when the person and his people clearly did not want his remains to be disturbed and would have considered it traumatic and humiliating?

Happy Riches, Answer requested by Ahmed Yousuf

The essence of your question is knowing whether the person and his people clearly did not want his remains to be disturbed.

Unless there is a notice stating that the person or people buried at this site do not wish to be disturbed by anybody, then there is no issue of ethics really. How do you know that the people involved in the burial actually care about bones that are long forgotten? You don’t. The bones could be those of a person who was murdered. They could be the bones of a mass graveyard from a genocide. In which case, there is no violation of faith regarding the individual.

For someone to be traumatized and humiliated, the person has to be alive. Dead people are not alive. Death is about life being a futile existence on this planet. There is nothing unethical about digging up the bones of dead people, if their relatives are not alive. Crematoriums provide evidence as to the significance of dead people.

What I write might seem rather harsh, cold and callous. But the person who said that we are to love our neighbor as ourselves, and gave His own life as the price for the redemption of humankind, said that we should leave the dead to the dead, because the Creator is the God of the living. There is something important that needs to be done rather than worry about dead people’s bones.

• But he said to him, “Leave the dead to bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” (Luke 9:60)
• ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not God of the dead, but of the living.” (Matthew 22:32)

When you understand that the Creator God, who created Heaven and Earth, is not the god of this world, the god of the dead, but the Lord of the Living—those who have been born of Him—then you will understand that digging up the bones of dead people is not really a moral issue, once the people affected are dead and buried themselves.

Eternal life is what everybody needs, not worrying whether their bones are not eaten by bacteria or have been sold by grave robbers to practitioners of voodoo or any such thing.

Death Is A Certainty, This You Know, What Happens Then Is Also Certain