They want people to surrender their personal power to them and share their pathological illness. They have seen many changes and have been against every one of them. What a difference it might make if their one life was seen as one to live for growth in relationships and for the discovery of knowledge that permits something beyond groveling before non-existent, capricious gods. Easter Island is a tidy little microcosm. Space was limited.
Islands are that way.
The people destroyed themselves, their civilization and their environment by overbreeding and internecine wars. Religion was their fatal disease. It might be ours. We might have settled the stars by now, but we have wasted the lifespace of our species with such nonsense as mythically believing God wants sex used only for making babies. This defect in rational though alone has produced tragedy for countless humans.