Indiana Jones and the Objective Existence of God

0:01 I’m going to ask a question here, and I need y’all to stay with me.

0:04 Should Indiana Jones dedicate his life to Christ?

0:08 This is not a question I ask lightly– in fact,

0:13 it is not a question I’ve ever asked of anyone before.

0:16 I am a Jewish man,

0:18 as is Steven Spielberg,

0:19 the director of the Indiana Jones films, and even Harrison Ford,

0:23 Indiana Jones himself is [a quarter Jewish!

0:26 Not too shabby.] But still, I have been rolling this

0:30 question around my head for months.

0:33 Should Indiana Jones dedicate his life to Christ?

0:37 Because here’s the thing: I am Jewish.

0:40 BUT if I walked into a room and found a 700 year old

0:44 man guarding a cup that Jesus drank from,

0:47 and if I watched with my own eyes, water from that same cup

0:51 heal a GUNSHOT WOUND, I would have to reconsider my belief system.

0:56 I would think to myself,

0:58 “I have to become…a monk.

1:00 Or a priest, or an evangelist, or something, right?

1:04 Because if the power of Christ can actually keep a dude

1:09 alive for 700 years and heal a gunshot wound right

1:13 in front of me,

1:14 then I should probably start following this book a little more closely!”

1:19 But that is not how Indiana Jones reacts.

1:21 He has his brief encounter with the power of Christ and

1:25 then moves on and seems to live his life exactly the same way he did before.

1:30 In fact, the most

1:31 acknowledgement he gives to this extraordinary experience is

1:34 a line in the latest film in

1:36 the franchise, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.

1:40 It kind of drives me crazy.

1:43 He says, “a few times in my life, I've seen things.

1:46 Things I can't explain.

1:48 And I've come to believe it's not so much what you believe,

1:52 it’s how hard you believe it.”

1:55 This makes sense as something I might say

1:57 to settle an argument between different religious

2:00 sects.

2:00 It does not make sense as something an archaeologist who’s seen Jesus stitch up

2:06 a bullet hole would say.

2:07 It’s not so much what you believe, Indy??

2:10 You’re an archaeologist!

2:11 You should believe in the things you have evidence for!

2:14 And by the way, the holy grail isn’t even

2:16 the first time you’ve seen proof of God!

2:18 Two years before that magic cup, you saw a bunch of angels

2:21 burst forth from the ark of the covenant,

2:23 and a year before that, you only survived a fight

2:26 because of help from Shiva the destroyer!

2:29 Look, it’s very easy for me to be critical.

2:34 I don’t think I’ve seen “objective proof of god” even once.

2:38 But Indiana Jones didn’t seem

2:40 to change his belief system upon encountering the divine the first time,

2:45 or the second time,

2:47 or the third, or the fourth,

2:49 and for some reason I just can’t stop thinking about it.

2:53 Does Indy even care that God exists?

2:55 What should he have done?

2:57 What would any of us do?

3:00 Let’s run down the evidence first,

3:02 to try to establish at least a basic framework

3:05 for the makeup of deities in Indiana Jones’ world.

3:08 This will include discussion of late

3:10 plot points from many Indiana Jones things,

3:12 including the recent game “Indiana Jones and

3:14 the Great Circle,” so heads up if you don’t want to be spoiled on that.

3:20 The first time we meet Indiana Jones, he’s raiding a lost ark.

3:23 The ark, he explains, is the ark of

3:26 the covenant,

3:26 what the ancient Hebrews used to carry around the ten commandments.

3:30 The ark itself has been hidden for such a long time because

3:33 a Pharaoh stole it and took it to the city of

3:36 Tannis, and then God buried the whole city under a sandstorm as punishment.

3:41 Brody says “an army which

3:43 carries the ark before it is invincible.” Indiana does manage to find the ark,

3:49 only to have it stolen by the Nazis,

3:51 who take it to a special island, crack it open,

3:54 and get exactly what’s coming to them.

3:56 Indy and his companion Marion close their eyes as a number

3:59 of angels or god or something fly around,

4:02 zap every fascist in sight, ascend into heaven maybe,

4:06 and then slam the ark back closed.

4:08 This is the last time we see the ark, because

4:11 almost immediately the US Government locks it in a

4:14 box and wheels it into a big ol warehouse.

4:17 The next time Indy encounters something inexplicably divine is in “Indiana Jones

4:22 and the Temple of Doom”– which is

4:24 actually chronologically before Raiders of the Lost

4:26 Ark.

4:27 In "Temple of Doom,” Indy crash lands in India

4:29 and finds out that a local village has

4:31 had their “Sankara stone” taken from them,

4:34 and has subsequently undergone drought, famine, and

4:36 a bunch of other bad stuff.

4:38 The Sankara Stones, Indy explains, were stones given to a priest

4:42 named Sankara directly by the god Shiva.

4:44 Within the movie, we see numerous inexplicable,

4:47 seemingly religiously-powered phenomena.

4:49 The stones themselves can glow, burn,

4:52 and maybe protect a village.

4:54 Voodoo dolls are real and effective.

4:56 A priest of the goddess

4:58 Kali Ma can reach into someone’s chest and

5:00 pluck out their heart without killing them.

5:03 A special liquid can turn rebellious humans into possessed slaves.

5:06 And at the end, Indy achieves victory

5:09 over the evil priest, Mola Ram, by yelling “you betrayed Shiva!

5:13 You betrayed Shiva!”, which seems

5:15 to divinely activate the Sankara stone.

5:18 The stone burns Mola Ram, Indy wins, returns the stone to

5:22 the village, kisses Kate Capshaw, the end.

5:25 Later, in “Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade,”

5:28 Indy goes on the quest for the Holy Grail,

5:30 the legendary cup that Jesus Christ drank out of

5:33 during the last supper,

5:34 and subsequently Joseph of Arimathea used to catch Christ’s blood during the

5:39 crucifixion.

5:39 This endows the cup with divine significance and power.

5:43 In The Last Crusade,

5:45 Indiana Jones’ dad has been trying to find the grail for his whole life,

5:49 a quest Indy views as largely foolish.

5:51 But they do find the grail, guarded by an honest to god,

5:55 living, 700-year-old knight.

5:56 And as a bonus reward, the liquid inside the cup is truly

6:01 endowed with divine power,

6:03 fully healing Indiana’s dad from a bullet wound to the gut.

6:07 Unfortunately, a dumb nazi tries to steal the grail,

6:09 there’s a big earthquake, and it falls into the depths

6:11 of the earth, never to be seen again.

6:14 Finally, in the video game “Indiana Jones

6:16 and the Great Circle,” Indy is back on the road,

6:20 determined to uncover the mystery of…“the great

6:22 circle,” [“If you were to draw a line

6:25 through these ancient sites around the globe,

6:28 you’d get a perfectly aligned circle”].

6:30 Over the course of his globe-trotting adventure, he discovers that

6:35 all these different important sites conceal the same ancient artifacts,

6:38 each of which is written

6:40 in “Adamic.” As in, the very first language,

6:43 the language God gave to Adam before the whole

6:46 tower of Babel hubbub.

6:48 All of the artifacts eventually lead him– and the Nazis– to Iraq,

6:52 where they uncover a different ark, not a box this time but a BOAT.

6:57 It’s Noah’s Ark!

6:58 The head Nazi, Voss thinks that he can use the Ark,

7:01 along with all the ancient artifacts they’ve found,

7:03 to harness the power of god and win the war.

7:07 Indiana warns Voss that Noah’s feats aren’t

7:09 reproducible– after all, Noah was chosen by God– but Voss ignores him,

7:13 and uses the artifacts of

7:15 the “great circle” in an Adamic incantation.

7:18 This promptly summons a short-lived flood,

7:20 and the Nazi manages to disintegrate himself as the ark teleports to Antarctica.

7:27 These make up Indiana Jones’ big encounters with God.

7:30 There are two more movies, of course,

7:33 but these deal with Aliens and Archimedes, rather than deities.

7:37 There’s also a whole extended

7:39 universe of Indiana Jones media, books and comics and the older games.

7:43 If we include these, Indy

7:44 has also met the Babylonian god Marduk,

7:47 the great Aztec serpent Quetzalcoatl, the Greek god Hecate,

7:51 and many others.

7:52 In fact, The Great Circle wasn’t even the first time Noah’s Ark came into play:

7:56 in the book “Indiana Jones and the Genesis

7:59 Deluge,” he finds the ark in Turkey and

8:02 actually has a vision of Noah himself– though I

8:05 think this incident has been overruled in favor

8:08 of the recent game.

8:09 But because it’s cleaner, and maybe because I find it more compelling,

8:13 I want to boil our discussion down to these four incidents,

8:17 four moments in which he witnesses

8:19 proof of god over the span of as many years.

8:23 Jones never starts these stories looking for

8:26 god– at the start of each quest,

8:28 he is always unconvinced by the mythic power of his quarries.

8:31 And this makes sense, because Indy is not a religious missionary.

8:35 He is an archaeologist and

8:37 historian,

8:37 and it is this background that defines how he approaches these phenomena.

8:42 As Indy knows, religious histories include facts that even the

8:46 staunchest atheist must acknowledge– for instance,

8:49 Jesus Christ was a real person, whether or not he was the son of god.

8:54 So with that in mind,

8:56 what is the archaeological history that

8:59 contextualizes each encounter with the divine?

9:02 Indiana Jones’ position on all this is perfectly set up early in Raiders of the

9:06 Lost Ark.

9:07 He already knows all about religious artifacts–

9:09 whether or not they actually prove

9:12 the existence of god,

9:13 items like the ark of the covenant are monumentally important to history.

9:18 He’s annoyed he even has to explain this

9:20 “The chest the Hebrews used to carry around

9:23 the Ten Commandments…Yes, the actual Ten Commandments.

9:26 The original stone tablets that

9:28 Moses brought down out of Mount Horeb and smashed,

9:30 if you believe in that sort of thing.

9:32 Any of you guys ever go to Sunday school?” Now, Indy couches this explanation

9:36 in a characteristically aloof “if you believe that sort of thing.”

9:41 But already,

9:41 his perspective on history isn’t as religiously agnostic as it might seem.

9:46 All his background information on the ark is

9:49 based specifically on the book of Exodus.

9:52 Exodus is where we get the physical description of the ark itself,

9:55 what kind of wood to make it out of,

9:57 how many cubits, its gold overlay, etcetera.

9:59 But Exodus is also where we get the more

10:02 historically significant details of the story:

10:04 it tells us about the people who built the ark,

10:08 the reasons they carried it, and the locations they brought it to.

10:11 The way Indy tells it,

10:13 these elements are the generally agreed-upon parts of the story.

10:16 It’s only when we get to the

10:18 “power of god” sections that he starts rolling his eyes.

10:21 [“I don't believe in magic, a lot of

10:23 superstitious hocus-pocus.

10:24 I'm going after a find of incredible historical significance.

10:29 You're talking about the bogeyman.”] But his

10:31 apparent belief that you can simply take

10:33 God out of the book of Exodus to get an otherwise reliable text is…well,

10:38 it’s not quite the judgment

10:39 a historically-informed archaeologist should make.

10:42 Outside of the words of the old testament itself,

10:46 you are not going to find a lot of

10:48 evidence of ancient Jews being enslaved in Egypt,

10:50 or people wandering the desert for generations,

10:53 or even the existence of an individual guy named

10:56 “Moses.” Which doesn’t mean Indiana shouldn’t look for the ark!

11:00 But it does mean that,

11:02 even without a belief in “superstitious hocus

11:05 pocus,” Indy is already demonstrating quite a

11:08 bit of faith– faith in the veracity of the book of Exodus.

11:12 The fact that he does find the ark,

11:14 and it looks exactly as described in the old testament,

11:18 already swings history way in favor

11:20 of the bible– the fact that GOD then pops out

11:24 of the ark is almost just icing on the cake.

11:28 When it comes to verifiable history,

11:31 the bible looks like a peer-reviewed academic paper when

11:35 compared with what Jones has to go on when searching for the holy grail.

11:39 Obviously, we’ve moved from old to new testament here:

11:42 the ark comes from wandering in the desert with Moses,

11:45 the grail comes from the adventures of Jesus Christ.

11:48 But the ark and the grail don’t exactly

11:51 get the same weight in their respective books.

11:53 See if you can spot the difference–

11:56 here’s how Exodus describes the ark:

11:57 “Have them make an ark of acacia wood—two and

12:00 a half cubits long, a cubit and a half wide, and a cubit and a half high.

12:05 Overlay it with pure gold,

12:06 both inside and out, and make a gold molding around it.

12:13 [overlapping speech] Place the cover

12:16 on top of the ark and put in the ark the

12:19 tablets of the covenant law that I will give you.”

12:21 And here’s how Matthew describes the holy grail:

12:24 “Then he took a cup-” It’s pretty subtle, did you catch it?

12:28 The Holy Grail functionally does not exist as an

12:31 object in the actual text of the New Testament.

12:35 In fact, designation of this cup as “the holy grail,” as

12:38 well as it containing the blood of Christ

12:41 and having magical powers, doesn’t come from the New Testament at all.

12:45 None of that started until

12:47 the 1300s, specifically from a poem by Robert de Boron.

12:51 Boron borrowed the idea of the grail from

12:54 another poet, Chrétien de Troyes,

12:56 who invented a special cup without a connection to Jesus,

13:00 just so Perceval of Arthur’s round table would have something to quest for.

13:05 Boron took the idea

13:06 of the grail and added its Jesus-related history.

13:09 It was Boron that decided that Joseph of Arimathea

13:12 caught the blood of Christ in the same cup as was used in the last supper,

13:16 and Boron who decided that Joseph was then sustained by this cup while in jail.

13:21 The holy grail, this stuff I’m describing?

13:24 It’s pure biblical fanfiction.

13:26 And this fanfiction is what Indiana

13:29 Jones’ dad decided to spend his life pursuing:

13:31 “Fifty Shades of Gray” with BDSM swapped out for

13:35 a cup of Jesus’ blood.

13:37 Indy’s initial reaction to the grail is, if anything, overly generous [“I’ve

13:41 heard this bedtime story before”].

13:43 The fact that they do find the grail,

13:46 with all its entailing divine powers,

13:48 presents an especially strange question of historical

13:51 “proof”.

13:51 The grail’s existence wouldn’t compel Indiana to believe in the bible per se,

13:56 because the bible says nothing about the grail.

13:59 Instead, it seems to be proving that some medieval poets

14:02 were actually history’s greatest secret religious archaeologists,

14:05 unearthing relics from the son of

14:08 god that even the bible had forgotten about.

14:11 But even the holy grail has a far more legitimate

14:16 paper trail than the “Sankara Stones,” the divine objects

14:19 in “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.”

14:22 That’s because the Sankara stones don’t really

14:25 exist outside the universe of Indiana Jones–

14:28 at least not in any way close to the movie’s depiction.

14:33 Real-life archaeologist Danika Parikh

14:34 says “the Sankara stones are Shiva lingas,

14:37 or representations of the Hindu god Shiva,

14:39 and they’re considered phallic because Shiva is

14:42 a creator as well as a destroyer.

14:44 They’re fairly common in India,

14:45 I’ve never heard anyone refer to them as “sacred stones” outside of this movie.”

14:51 They aren’t mythical, lost items of potentially great power,

14:55 just pieces of Hindu iconography

14:57 hastily retrofit to be the macguffin of the movie.

15:00 The group that steals the Sankara Stones,

15:03 a cult called the “thuggees,” were “real” inasmuch as

15:06 there was historically a group of people with

15:08 that name and they did maybe do things in the name of Kali.

15:12 But it’s hard to even pretend to talk

15:14 about the historicity of Temple of Doom because

15:16 the film’s whole internal mythology reeks of such

15:19 a lack of interest in its subject matter,

15:23 and an obviously racist disregard for its setting.

15:26 The disinterest in finding a historically significant

15:28 object for Indy to chase means

15:31 that the surrounding supernatural elements don’t have a clear explanation,

15:35 divine or not.

15:36 Does Mola Ram’s ability to pluck a heart out of a chest actually come from Kali?

15:41 Is the possessing liquid that the slaves of the

15:44 thuggees drink also directly given by a god?

15:47 Inexplicably,

15:47 Indiana Jones is also tortured via a voodoo doll in Temple of Doom,

15:51 which is a practice completely unrelated

15:53 to Hindu tradition.

15:54 The perspective of Indiana Jones, the man, seems to parallel Indiana Jones,

15:59 the franchise, when it comes to viewing the deities of Hinduism– sure,

16:03 they might be real,

16:04 but not in a way that’s worth thinking about.

16:07 The most nuanced view of religion in Indiana Jones

16:11 might come from the series’ most recent entry:

16:13 the 2024 video game “Indiana Jones and the Great

16:17 Circle.” The discovery at the end of the

16:19 journey is another object of immense significance to

16:22 the bible– Noah’s Ark [“You found the Ark of the Covenant,

16:26 yes, but I found Noah’s Ark”]– but Indy

16:30 isn’t so quick to tie it to one specific religious lineage.

16:33 He says many cultures, from across the

16:36 world and history, experienced their own great flood.

16:40 [“You have the classic from the Hebrew

16:44 bible, the Sumerian creation myth,

16:47 the great flood of the Chinese Gun-Yu, the blood deluge of Ymir,

16:52 and of course, there’s the numerous Greek myths.”] This,

16:54 I think, is the perspective of religion that

16:56 makes most sense for Indiana Jones to have;

16:59 not a view that privileges one particular telling

17:02 over all others,

17:03 but a broad grasp of history that understands the shared origins of many

17:08 different cultural stories.

17:09 “Noah’s Ark” doesn’t have to be literally Noah’s ark, as in “captained

17:14 by a guy named Noah who gathered two of

17:17 every animal,” but simply a shorthand for “a boat

17:20 that helped humanity survive a great flood.” Indiana

17:23 could also easily believe that there was

17:25 a flood and a boat that survived it

17:28 without necessarily believing that flood had divine

17:30 origins.

17:31 Vast areas of land could have been wiped out

17:33 by glacier melt from the previous ice age,

17:36 for example.

17:37 Some archaeologists theorize that a single massive asteroid could have crashed

17:42 into the Indian Ocean nearly 5,000

17:45 years ago and produced skyscraper-sized tsunamis.

17:48 Or, of course, it could have been God– which is ultimately

17:52 the take that The Great Circle goes with.

17:54 After all, the Nazi scientist Voss slots a bunch of rocks into

17:57 a big wheel and speaks in an ancient tongue,

18:00 which almost immediately summons the waters of heaven.

18:02 Other details of the plot also

18:04 detract from the previously suggested, cross-cultural version of history:

18:09 the ancient stones are written in “Adamic,” the language God gave to Adam,

18:13 which is a specifically

18:15 old testament origin story.

18:16 And as Voss preps these artifacts, Indiana hollers that only Noah

18:21 would be capable of this feat; [“You don’t know what you’re doing!

18:36 Noah was chosen by God”].

18:43 This is the point Indiana Jones reaches at the end

18:46 of each story– the realization that for all his

18:49 archaeological knowledge and religious skepticism,

18:51 only faith will actually save the day.

18:55 He closes his eyes when the ark opens,

18:58 heals his father with the holy grail, fully believes the Noah story,

19:01 and even properly acknowledges Shiva.

19:04 It is, almost always, an awesome moment;

19:07 all the rationality in the world crumbling as he,

19:11 and we, witness something that cannot otherwise

19:14 be explained.

19:15 But the question remains: what then?

19:18 Each of these four stories culminates

19:21 with the lesson that life cannot be explained purely rationally.

19:25 But after these realizations,

19:27 Indy still has to be in another movie, comic,

19:29 or video game, and he still has to play the role of

19:32 a rational, skeptical man.

19:33 Is there any way to square this?

19:36 What should his life look like,

19:38 after a momentary encounter,

19:40 sorry after FOUR momentary encounters, with the demiurge?

19:45 In our world, no one has witnessed ghosts fly out of the ark of the covenant,

19:50 or healed a bullet

19:51 wound by dousing it with holy-grail water.

19:54 But plenty of people still think they’ve experienced

19:57 “proof” of god.

19:58 Surviving a deadly experience,

20:00 the birth or death of a loved one, acts of compassion

20:04 or community.

20:05 A sunrise.

20:06 A specific burn pattern in their slice of toast.

20:10 These may read to me as

20:12 far less specific,

20:13 far less “objective,” than what Indiana Jones experienced– but to the people at

20:18 the center of those stories,

20:20 their glimpses of God are no less “real.” If you are predisposed

20:25 to believe God influences everyday life,

20:27 you will find proof everywhere: in the beauty of nature or

20:32 stories on the news,

20:33 or any unlikely outcome to any event (as encapsulated by one of my all-time

20:38 favorite “old-people-on-social media” posts):

20:39 “My sister in law died in a fire, her Bible was

20:44 beside her bed on a stand,

20:46 not a burn mark on the Bible…Awesome…miracle from God…

20:50 And if someone is predisposed to find these glimpses of God,

20:55 each event will be filtered

20:57 through their existing perspective on the world: if you were raised Christian,

21:01 a near-death experience might reinforce your belief in the greatness of Christ,

21:05 but it will not convince you of the existence of Shiva.

21:09 On the other hand, if you are a staunch atheist,

21:13 or even just someone who “doesn’t believe in a

21:16 lot of superstitious hocus pocus,” these same events–

21:18 which, to some, could be read as undeniable proof of God–

21:22 will instead be read as a combination of

21:24 coincidence and explainable scientific principles.

21:27 And even if, EVEN IF, a skeptic was presented with

21:32 something they found truly inexplicable,

21:34 an event that seemed to provide proof of some higher power,

21:38 it is nearly impossible to imagine that event would

21:41 come with a clear answer to which God did

21:44 it and which religion got it right.

21:47 But that is, in essence, what Indiana Jones has been confronted

21:51 with: this cup grants people eternal life,

21:54 and it’s specifically because it’s the cup that Jesus

21:57 drank from.

21:58 This stone burns non-believers because this stone was a gift from Shiva.

22:04 I mean …how are you supposed to apply religious philosophy to that?

22:09 What questions are left?

22:11 I guess…I’m thinking about that line from Dial of Destiny again,

22:15 the one I said drives me crazy.

22:18 “I’ve come to believe it’s not so much what you believe,

22:21 it’s how hard you believe it”

22:23 To me, at first blush, this seemed like Indy denying the existence of…truth.

22:29 How could it not matter what you believe?

22:32 But I think, read a little more generously,

22:35 the line becomes less about objective truth and more

22:39 about which passions we allow to guide our

22:42 understanding of the world.

22:44 Throughout Indiana Jones’ life, he’s seen many apparitions of god

22:48 from many different traditions.

22:50 God, Jesus, Shiva, Aliens, Marduk, Hecate, Quetzlcoatl.

22:55 What could possibly connect everything from this

22:59 wide a swath of the supernatural?

23:02 Well.

23:02 Each being, no matter its origin, has manifested, manifested exclusively,

23:08 through archaeological artifacts.

23:09 In order for a god to melt a bunch of Nazis, heal his father,

23:14 or free a bunch of kids from slavery,

23:17 Indiana Jones has received proof that someone has to do

23:21 the work– the work of historical investigation

23:25 and risk-taking and gosh darn archaeology.

23:29 To Indiana Jones, whatever makes a “god” is inextricably linked to this pursuit.

23:33 He doesn’t need to change his life in reaction to the gods he’s found;

23:39 he’s only found those gods

23:40 because he’s already dedicated himself and his life to a greater purpose.

23:46 God appears to Indy

23:48 like God appears to any believer;

23:51 proof through the things he finds most beautiful.

23:56 History, illuminated.

24:04 I do actually have more thoughts about God and Indiana Jones,

24:08 much more unresolved ones,

24:09 but first let me just tell you what’s happening on Nebula real quick.

24:13 First off: I’ve got a new video up there!

24:16 Inspired by Razbuten and ProZD, I recorded what was supposed

24:19 to be a quick rundown of my most played games

24:22 on Steam that turned into a rabbit hole of trying

24:24 to calculate just how much of some games I’ve actually played.

24:29 ["On Switch alone, I have played Slay the Spire for 210 hours"]

24:35 It's a really fun video that reveals parts of my

24:37 gaming taste that might not come through in my essays.

24:40 Secondly: I lied, I actually have TWO new videos up.

24:43 The other one, that went up just a little earlier this month,

24:46 is an hour and a half long conversation with

24:49 the really great movie channel “Like Stories

24:51 of Old” about the film The Brutalist,

24:53 where we try to untangle its many themes and questions.

24:56 I had already been chewing on The Brutalist for weeks,

25:00 and I came out of my discussion with Tom with even more to think about.

25:04 Nebula, if you’re just finding out now,

25:06 is this premium streaming service that features tons

25:09 and tons of incredible creators.

25:11 I personally have tons of videos you can only watch there,

25:14 and so do many of my favorite video essayists.

25:18 And for some reason we’re basically giving it away;

25:21 if you join with my code,

25:23 you’ll get an entire 40% off an annual subscription, which breaks down to

25:27 only $3 a month.

25:29 Three dollars a month!

25:31 Nothing is that cheap anymore.

25:33 But Nebula, somehow, is.

25:35 So in summary: exclusive video on my most played games,

25:38 exclusive video on The Brutalist, years of

25:41 other exclusives, too many other great creators to even name.

25:44 All yours for 40% off, when you sign up

25:47 with my code.

25:48 And the thing about Nebula is- I guess that’s okay for Indy.

25:51 But here’s my other

25:52 question: what about everyone else??

25:54 Tons of other people are also seeing proof of God in

25:57 these movies!

25:58 Like, the Nazis think they can use the ark of the covenant to help win the war,

26:04 but if you were a Nazi and you saw proof

26:07 of the same god who had designated Jews his “chosen

26:10 people,” wouldn’t that maybe be a smart time to reconsider your Nazi-ness?

26:14 And what about, what

26:16 about the US government?

26:17 I mean yeah it’s one of the best ending scenes of all time,

26:22 wheeling the ark of the covenant into that giant warehouse,

26:25 but doesn’t this kind of read like some

26:27 sort of fringe conspiracy theory?

26:28 Like your uncle who everyone tries not to engage with

26:32 is forwarding you facebook posts about how the

26:34 government has proof of god and they’re keeping

26:36 it locked in a warehouse?

26:38 And which gods aren’t real,

26:41 huh?

26:41 Indy uses the staff of amun-ra to show where the ark of the covenant was hidden,

26:46 but should we be taking amun-ra more seriously as well?

26:50 Is Osiris going to show up somewhere?

26:53 Also, in Temple of Doom,

26:54 Mola Ram says that “the Hebrew god will fall, and the Christian

26:58 God will be cast down and forgotten.” Sure

27:01 this line could be taken to mean like,

27:04 people who believe in those gods but imo Mola

27:07 Ram is the only guy in the entire franchise

27:09 who actually grapples with the fact that he’s existing

27:12 in the world with so many other gods at

27:14 the same time,

27:15 which I guess makes sense because he wouldn’t have been raised monotheistic.

27:21 Finally, in Dial of Destiny,

27:23 both Indy and Mads Mikkelson scoff at the idea of the Spear

27:27 of Longinus having any real power,

27:29 though also it is a fake Spear of Longinus, so maybe the

27:32 real one does have power.

27:34 Plus, Mads is going on the whole movie about how the dial of archimedes

27:38 wasn’t supernatural, it just operates on cold hard math and math doesn’t lie,

27:44 which is an interesting

27:45 contradiction to the rest of the series and

27:48 kinda works to set Mads up as villainous,

27:50 because by this point we’ve learned that sometimes you just gotta

27:53 go with the supernatural and- wait sorry I

27:56 just realized the spear of longinus definitely does

27:58 have magic powers in Indiana Jones canon,

28:01 there’s a whole comic book about it, I’m never going to solve this, UGH.