Indiana Jones and the Objective Existence of God
Added 2025-03-21 15:30:02 +0000 UTCProbably the most on-brand title I've had in a while. Please enjoy!
If you'd prefer to watch on Nebula: https://nebula.tv/videos/jacob-geller-indiana-jones-and-the-objective-existence-of-god
Comments
As an atheist this video was frustrating to watch. Note: I'm not saying it wasn't a good video or that the perspective shared was wrong. I actually really enjoyed it. It's just that he got so incredibly close to an idea that many atheist, myself included, struggle to get across to thiests. Don't get me wrong I don't think that the idea would shake anyone's faith but it would certainly be nice if religious people understood our perspective a bit more. As this video shows people can look at religion skepticism with a lot of confusion. Should Indiana convert to Christianity, is the question this video essay asks, and my answer would be no. I can explain why my answer would be no with the line from this video, "The fact that he does find the ark, and it looks exactly as described in the old testament, already swings history way in favor of the bible." A book can have real things in it but still be fictional. A common example given is the Spiderman comics take place in New York City, so because New York City exists does that mean that the Spiderman comics are real events that actually happened? Now if anyone has actually bothered to read this obnoxiously long wall of text this far this is probably the point where your thinking something along the lines of, "and then god pops out of that ark, you dumbass. That's like saying you wouldn't believe the Spiderman comics were real if you met a living breathing Spiderman!" And that, specifically, is idea that Im talking about, because I wouldn't. An unexplained phenomenon whether it be a Nazi melting ark, or a super powered vigilant with spider powers does not demonstrate the historicity of a document that references them. There are countless historical accounts trying to explain things outside of the authors understanding, blatant falshoods, mythisized embellishments, ect. ect. In the Indiana Jones ark example we have historical accounts of what the authors believed the arc to be, and an object we don't understand. The viewpoint of Jacob in this video seems to be that we see an object we can't explain so we should obviously believe the written accounts of people that can explain it. From the skeptical viewpoint this view is completely rational but it prompts a very important follow up question: Are they right? Maybe they didn't understand the object either. After all the supposed religious explanation in the case of the ark is literally god magic. It's not an explanation at all. We aren't told how it works, how it was made, or why it melts people. Even if you saw something like this would you really be content to just say it was magic, and not investigate further? Not only that there are phenomenon in the Indiana Jones franchise from different incompatible religions. So at least some of them are incorrect. If you were to witness an unexplainable phenomena like this it would be possible that a religion that spoke about it was true, it had a completely rational explanation we weren't aware of, or some even more fantastical cause we didn't even have the knowledge to consider. Regardless I agree with the idea this essay poses that Indy not taking more interest in supernatural historical claims despite seeing so many first hand. Personally I think it kind of shows how thiests, in this case Steven Spielberg which the video points out is Jewish, tend to view skeptics, as people who would reject the supernatural even if it was directly in front of their eyes. This just isn't true, and that is the reason I felt the need to write this ridiculously long comment to describe that. Now I realize literary analysis is subjective and the idea that Steven Spielberg doesn't accurately portray people with a skeptical viewpoint well is my own interpretation. However I hope I was able to get the idea across to at least someone who misunderstood the viewpoint of a skeptic in terms of the "supernatural". That being that my thought upon witnessing something I couldn't explain would not be to assume that a source that claims to explain it is correct, but to actually investigate it (including sources that claim to understand it).
chris rogers
2025-03-22 19:18:28 +0000 UTCAs someone in biomedical science but very spiritual { I was literally in Vatican City March 8th} this has become one of my favourite videos ~
Ès
2025-03-21 22:43:21 +0000 UTCJacob Geller title generator.
Cobalt Blue
2025-03-21 16:26:14 +0000 UTCAlready know this will be my all-time-favourite JG video.
Arcane Workshop
2025-03-21 15:36:37 +0000 UTC
