BIG UPDATE!

There is so much to talk about today. First of all, December is coming. If at any point during this year you pledged at the $30 per video level and want a holiday card from me, please message me on Patreon with a mailing address. The $30 per video level doesn't only grant you a movie request. You also get a card directly from me. I love the season, and I'm always happy to send out warm wishes over the holidays.

Next, work on Left Behind and the Translation of God continues. I finished the research earlier this year. Then I finished writing. Then I recorded. I have been editing for a couple months, and I'm about halfway through. My winter release window is still on schedule. The most likely month is January. Runtime estimate is about an hour and a half. (90 minutes.)

For all of you who have commissioned an episode but were hoping to commission more, I have good news. To maintain order, I instituted a "one per customer" rule when I started taking paid requests. I'm strongly considering changing that in 2018 to "one per customer each year." A lot of my patrons who have already requested their episode want more, and I'm fairly confident I can keep up with the demand if I change it to yearly instead of only one forever. Expect that change early next year.

Finally, SCRIPTS! So many scripts. As always, if there is a difference between the script and the finished product on YouTube, it's probably because of last minute changes or cut material. Enjoy.

VIDEODROME:

 AUDIO 1
 Videodrome is a 1983 sci-fi horror film written and directed by David Cronenberg. Max is the president of CIVIC-TV, a Canadian television station that specializes in softcore pornography and gratuitous violence – at least as much as he can get away with. Max wants to push to envelope of taste into something more hardcore for his audience. His assistant, Harlan, discovers a television broadcast called Videodrome: a show in which people are tortured so graphically that it almost seems real. Max considers pirating the show and using it on CIVIC-TV without licensing it. Max defends the controversial nature of his television station to a talk show host, and while being interviewed, he meets Nikki and forms a relationship with her. Intrigued by Videodrome, Nikki leaves town to audition and is not heard from again. Max's associate, Masha, informs him that Videodrome is part of a political movement and warns him to stay away from it.
 Max begins to hallucinate. These visions are tied to watching Videodrome. He tries to track down Brian O'Blivion, a philosopher who believes television will change the course of human history and how people engage with the world. O'Blivion actually passed away months ago. He wanted to use Videodrome to bring about his vision of the future, but his partners had more sinister plans in mind. These people include Max's assistant, Harlan, who was working for Videodrome the whole time. The show's secret producer, Spectacular Optical Corporation, wanted to use the show to give brain tumors to anyone so interested in the extreme sex and violence of Videodrome. Spectacular Optical and its cohorts are concerned that the rest of the world is getting tougher while Canada and America are getting softer. Max is brainwashed by two competing powers – for and against Videodrome – and after killing people on both sides, commits suicide in hopes of ascending to a new level of consciousness.
 [clip O'Blivion]
 AUDIO 2
 Brian O'Blivion says that watching Videodrome does not create a simple tumor. It creates a new organ, a new way to perceive reality. Max knows this to be true. After watching Videodrome, he begins to hallucinate. He sees televisions come to life, he sees one person when it is actually another, and so forth. O'Blivion says there is nothing real outside our perception of reality. What O'Blivion is talking about is actually a subset of metaphysics in philosophy called Idealism, NOT to be confused with moral idealism, which is a subset of ethics in philosophy. No, Idealism in metaphysics is that belief that only minds and the contents of the minds exist. This rejects the concept of dualism – the mind and body being separate and distinct -- something discussed in a previous episode.  Basically, Idealism denies the possibility of knowing the non-mental or even the existence of the non-mental altogether. Some of this philosophy has roots in religion, particularly Indian Buddhism, but contemporary philosophers know Idealism best from George Berkeley or – “BERKLY” – depending on your pronunciation and your proximity to California.  
 Berkeley might have had a lot to say about Videodrome and Brian O'Blivion had he lived to see the film. Berkeley, much like O'Blivion, believed that nothing exists outside our perceptions. He once said “It is evident to any one who takes a survey of the objects of human knowledge, that they are either ideas actually imprinted on the senses, or else such as are perceived by attending to the passions and operations of the mind, or lastly ideas formed by help of memory and imagination, either compounding, dividing, or barely representing those originally perceived in the aforesaid ways.” Now, this is a mouthful, but in more plain language, he believed that nothing exists unless we are looking at it or otherwise sensing it. Tasting it, smelling it, et cetera. It can be summed up as esse est percipi – to be is to be perceived. This does not mean, according to Berkeley, that objects disappear when no human beings are experiencing them. When Max leaves his apartment, Berkeley would say that the apartment would still exist without him. When Max is asleep at the beginning of the film, the television continues to exist while not perceived by him. Berkeley, an Irish Bishop, would say this is because everything is always perceived...by God. If an object does not exist unless it is perceived, and objects continue to be exist when humans do not see them, then someone else must be witnessing them at all times, and that person, according to Berkeley, is God.    
  AUDIO 3    
 Modern philosophers pointed out that this was specious reasoning, and indeed, some of Berkeley's contemporaries did as well. When watching Videodrome, an audience can be forgiven for being confused. “What are Max's hallucinations and what are not?” they might ask. “If Max is only hallucinating, how can be retrieve a gun from his body, have it mesh with his body and have it be functional enough to kill people, including himself?” Max, due to his hallucinations, is an unreliable narrator. We follow Max, he is our protagonist, so maybe even more than the obvious hallucinations are manufactured in his mind. Some characters appear only on television screens and others watch television only to become techno-zombies. Who is real? What is real? Well, remember O'Blivion's words and think about Berkeley's Idealism.   
 Max is able to hallucinate so strongly that reality around his hallucinations has changed. This is almost like Idealism in reverse. Max perceives a hole in his chest and other things, and because it is within his human perception, it becomes real. This is actually a counter-argument to Berkeley's Idealism – in the real world, not the movie – because human perception can be altered by drugs, mental illness and so forth. If we can perceive a reality that does not exist, then our perception-to-reality ratio must not be one-to-one, and if that is true, then reality must exist, in some respects, independent of our simple human perception. In other words, the universe continues even without us.   
 [clip]
 AUDIO 4
 The metaphysics of the film are like an aura of abstract thought around more grounded ideas about how we consume media. Max watches Videodrome and begins to mistake fantasy for reality, eventually creating reality from fantasy. That is the horror of the film – but represents something more tangible, more of our world. In the film, Brian O'Blivion says that the television screen is the retina of the mind's eye. Television is part of the physical structure of the brain. Therefore, whatever happens on television emerges as raw experience for those who watch it. Television is reality, and reality is less than television. … This is not just part of the fantasy of this sci-fi film. It means, in the real world, observing television makes it real to us. At the time of the film, television was becoming more and more important due to the proliferation of cable TV in the years prior, but we can see even more about how our media affects us today with the advent of the Internet.   
 Humanity exists somewhere between the mind and technological influence, what the film calls The New Flesh. That's why we see Max become one with technology on more than one occasion. Cronenberg has said “Since I see technology as being an extension of the human body, it's inevitable that it should come home to roost.” That, more than anything else, is the core of Videodrome. Our media informs us and changes how we perceive reality. It has changed how we communicate with one another, it teaches us half-truths about cultures that are not our own through stereotypes and mischaracterizations in film and television. Cronenberg's horror films sometimes feature an external force chasing down the protagonist, but often, the horror is internal. It comes...from within. In the case of Videodrome and media, the film argues that television can influence the viewer but only if the viewer allows themselves to be influenced by some unconscious choice. It cannot force you to do something you would not otherwise do, but it can awaken something ugly already inside you or reinforce a negative, unsavory or dangerous aspect of society that preexists that media.
 AUDIO 5
 Videodrome is surprisingly precise in its prediction about how reliant on our media we will become – not to mention its monopoly by shady forces and the coming of reality television. He could not have envisioned, say, Netflix, but he did see a dependency on mass media – a shared dependence upon which we judge normalcy and collective thought. We carry around our smartphones everywhere we go – I certainly do – and bring us that much closer to the cyborg that Max becomes. Videodrome opens with a station identification for Civic TV followed by a pre-recorded message about his appointments for the day. This reveals the extent to which technology has invaded its characters personal spaces and interpersonal relationships. Civic TV's motto: “The one you take to bed with you,” implies that video is becoming to new normalcy – the new relationship.  Again, the question: “Who is real? What is real?” Well, can't that also be asked of our world? How much, for example, do you know about Canada if you yourself are not Canadian?   
 You might be knowledgeable enough to have a firm grasp on the country, but if you are, say, an American, chances are good that your perception of our neighbor is colored heavily by fictional media and by bits of news media about its prime minister that most do not read past the headline. Our perception of how guns operate among those of us who do not own them is colored by how they function in action movies and television shows. Most people have seen far more guns used – sometimes inaccurately and in glorifying terms – in media more than guns fired in real life. Most of us only know what war feels like because we have seen war movies. Most of us only know what distant cultures – alien to our day-to-day – are like based on how they are depicted in film and television. Our media does influence our perception of reality whether we choose to admit that or not. Masha tells Max that Videodrome is dangerous because it has a philosophy. It is politically motivated. Most do not put a lot of thought about what they watch on television or in the movie theater, but those those controlling media empires are often motivated by political motives.    
  AUDIO 6  
  This results in propaganda delivered to people who do not realize that is what they are watching – and when confronted with the inherent politics or message of a piece of media, many prefer to dismiss this outright and decry any social critique of our media as “censorship” rather than become introspective about what we are consuming. In the talk show scene, Max and Nicki debate the merits of Civic-TV, its pornography and violence, but neither attempt introspection. They are both hypocrites – Max claiming that his television station provides a healthy outlet and that he is performing a public service, even though he knows that he just wants to get paid and, later in the film, is rightly accused that he, too, enjoys watching the torture of Videodrome. Nicki says that we are living in times that are far too overstimulated, but soon afterward, we learn that she revels in this overstimulation.  
 Berkely may not have been right about his theories, but we are, in a sense, creating worlds with our perceptions. Haven't we created artificial realities upon artificial realities? Aren't we building them on top the ruins of others? At the end of the film, Max is prompted by a vision of Nicki to shoot himself and thus become free of his old flesh. Audiences interpret this a variety of ways, and considering Cronenberg envisioned at least three different endings, one could argue that the film does not completely build to this moment if it could be so easily interchanged with two or more alternates. However, based on the text of the film, I would argue against Max actually transcending here. It looks like a powerful force inside the television has fed him another lie. 

THEY LIVE:

 AUDIO 1
 The 1988 John Carpenter film They Live has a problem, and it's not the acting or the fact that the story stats to fall apart in the third act. It's that the film's paranoid conspiracy theory has attracted right-wing, anti-government tin foil hat aficionados and phony truthers. They appropriate the imagery of the film, some of which are overtly antisemitic and will not be shown here. But make no mistake: the film is not expressing a desire for small-government conservatism nor does it propagate crackpot conspiracy theories about an ethnic or religious minority running the world. This is merely another example of people with small minds missing the point.
 The subjects of They Live are actually overtly leftist: sympathy for the middle class and working poor, desire for racial justice, anti-capitalism and especially anti-Ronald Reagan. The film was released mere days before the 1988 presidential election in which Reagan's Vice President, George Herbert Walker Bush, was poised to defeat Democratic challenger Michael Dukakis. This was actually a coincidence. Though highly political, the release date of They Live was initially about a month prior and moved only to avoid stiff multiplex competition. Even so, the happenstance of They Live's release was practically serendipitous: it allowed the audience to have the endpoint of the Reagan administration firmly in mind. They Live is an allegorical and admittedly outrageous version of the Reagan 80's. The film is anything but subtle, but if anyone has any doubts about this, Carpenter himself has not been shy about it, once saying “By the end of the ’70s there was a backlash against everything in the ’60s, and that’s what the ’80s were, and Ronald Reagan became president, and Reagonomics came in. … So a lot of the ideals that I grew up with were under assault …  And so by the late ’80s, I’d had enough, and I decided I had to make a statement, as stupid and banal as it is, but I made one, and that’s ‘They Live.’ … I just love that it was giving the finger to Reagan when nobody else would.”   
 [morning in America clip]
 AUDIO 2
 Yes, the alien politician says “Morning in America” -- practically the tagline for the Reagan administration. They Live is loosely adapted from a short story, but all the politics infused into the film are the invention of Carpenter himself, who wrote the screenplay under a pseudonym. So, what specific aspects of the Reagan 80's is Carpenter ridiculing, condemning and satirizing? Nada and Frank live a community for the poor, homeless or otherwise struggling. Like many homeless, a number of these people may have mental health issues. When Reagan was governor of California, he threw more than half of the state’s mental health patients out of hospitals and onto the streets and abolished the hospitals’ ability to institutionalize patients with severe mental illness. Most simply became homeless. As President, Reagan repealed a Carter-era mental health reform and slashed federal funding for mental health by about 30%. During his presidency, about 40,000 beds in mental hospitals were eliminated.   
 In They Live, homelessness is a serious problem. Early in the film, Nada says he still believes in America. He keeps himself out of trouble, and does the right thing, so he imagines that everything will eventually pick up for him. He sees himself living in squaller but still holds on to the dream that men like Reagan extol. Later in the film, he stumbles on to a resistance movement against alien forces who have taken over America and, indeed, the entire world. He puts on high-tech sunglasses that break through the lie and discovers a world of propaganda. Reagan was no stranger to such things. Ronald Reagan created a secret agency known as the Office of Public Diplomacy -- an organization designed to be used on the American people and to manipulate politics in South America. The OPD planted phony news stories throughout newspapers about right-wing Contra terrorists Reagan was arming to try to overthrow the Nicaraguan government. The OPD surveiled and intimidated journalists who were not reporting what the Reagan Administration wanted. On the eve of Reagan's re-election in 1984, the OPD spread a story that Soviet fighter jets were arriving in Nicaragua. Many journalists ran with it, but the story later turned out to be a hoax. The OPD’s activities were uncovered by the Comptroller General in 1987 and declared illegal soon after.   
 AUDIO 3
 One criticism of They Live is that rather than engage directly with the Reagan administration, it instead passes the blame to inhuman, otherworldly monsters, but that is the nature of science fiction that reflects real world concerns: it displays a bizarre, allegorical scenario. Yet, the aliens are not the only ones to blame in the film. Human beings collaborate with these creatures to earn wealth and power. Humanity is to blame for allowing these monsters to take away with the promise of prestige and what one collaborater in the film calls “the good life.” Similarly, the Reagan administration had a lot of dealings – some clearly illegal – with unsavory characters, and it's hard not to notice some parallels. Reagan sided against the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan and funded religious extremists with almost $5 billion in taxpyaer money. These extremists were the Mujahideen, some of whom eventually become the Taliban.  
 The Reagan administration illegally sold arms to Iran and supported South American terrorists. These groups may not be as inhuman as the aliens Carpenter showcased in his film, but bear in mind that in the aftermath of Reagan's support for the Contras, Reagan and the United States government were tried in the International Court of Justice for their part in the deaths of about 50,000 human beings. The Reagan Administration was convicted of violating Nicaragua’s sovereignty and encouraging the widespread crimes against humanity. So, yeah, not exactly collaborating with alien monsters but not as far off as one might think.
 [clip of capitalism]
 AUDIO 4
 Perhaps more than anything else, They Live tackles capitalism under the Reagan administration. When Nada puts on his sunglasses, he often sees the word “OBEY” and other conformist propaganda. The reason right wing audiences might mistake They Live for something that bolsters this idealogy is because of the misconception that capitalism fosters individuality whereas a regulated government does not. In reality, capitalism applauds the very small number of entrepreneurs who capture huge portions of mass markets. Naturally, this requires manufacturing products on a mass scale, which itself imposes uniformity on society. Meaning people all purchase the same products, and a great number of people all perform the same labor. Not that there is anything inherently wrong with identical suburban residential developments, but the idea that capitalism creates individuality or praises individuality is not accurate. Capitalism hopes to serve the greatest number of people, which means homogenizing everything from consumer products to entertainment.
 When capitalism is critcized in media like They Live or in politics or private discussions, there is often a defensive response akin “What's wrong with making money?” as if capitalism simply means “Earning a paycheck.” It does not. People earn money in socialist countries, European countries with more health, safety and anti-monopoly regulations and everywhere else. Most any developed country is a combination of capitalist and socialist economic policies, including America. When They Live critizes capitalism, it is taking aim at the ideology. The ideals that capitalism values. In the beginning of the film, Nada believes in America. He believes his setback must only be temporary because he never quits his jobs. Frank knows better. He is aware that capitalism establishes power in a minority upper class that exploits the working glass majority. Frank tells Nada that they gave the factory owners a break from time to time but they did not return the favor. Wealthy capitalists prioritize profit over the good of the nation, partly out of greed and partly out of a misunderstanding that their desire for wealth will “trickle down” to lower economic classes.   
 AUDIO 5
 They Live cannot cover everything that the Reagan administration did like supporting apartheid in South Africa and its purposeful inaction towards the AIDS crisis in America. But Carpenter was unrelenting in his attack on greed in America during the Reagan administration. He once said “I got resistance to the fact that it was all about money. ... They wanted me to maybe make them cannibals or something, to bring it down to the lowest common denominator, but I stuck to my guns.” The aliens in the film are called entrepreneurs. Their intentions towards Earth are not to eat us or erradicate us like so many other fictional aliens – but to control us, exploit us and use our resources without us knowing. The effect of rampant, unregulated capitalism is not “earning a paycheck.” The effect is unequal bargaining power among employers and employees. Reagan was famously hostile to workers' unions, and the effects of his de-regulation efforts – what businesses can and cannot do – are still being felt today. The ending is fascinating because Nada exposes the aliens, but would that be enough? Would everyone who collaborated with the aliens for power and wealth suddenly lose interest and switch sides now that we know about the invisible system of oppression?   
 People know about unchecked capitalism today, and we still buy products manufactured in overseas sweatshops, products created by child labor and in some cases, forced labor. The ending to They Live to rather optimistic if it tells us that unfettered greed and inhuman conditions can be solved by destroying a satellite dish. John Nada and Frank are Carpenter's mouthpieces in the film. John is named after himself, and Frank is named after Carpenter's screenwriting psuedonym. They embody naievte and enlightenment about the state of their world. Their sunglasses allow them to see the aliens – but more than that – they allow them to see ideology. An advertisement becomes its true intention. Money displays its true message. They Live is superficially about an alien conspiracy, but that is just the surface. The aliens are Reagan and 80's capitalists – Reaganites. The sunglasses expose the invisible system that maintains the country for ENOUGH of the population so they do not oppose it and grants no power to the poor, as they would be the most likely TO oppose it. The conspiracy is not a screwball theory about an invading, alien force. The conspiracy of They Live is the ideology of capitalism.   

INDIANA JONES:

 AUDIO 1
 What Indiana Jones is referencing in this scene is how some philosophical outlooks separate the words “fact” and truth.” John Locke was a proponent of using science to determine the qualities of something: mass, duration, et cetera. Much in the way Jones tried to guess the weight of the idol in Raiders of the Lost Ark. In response to Locke, Immanuel Kant, influenced by the skeptical work of David Hume, suggested that the only thing we can know about an object is that it exists because scientific knowledge comes only from how something appears to human beings, not how they actually are – independent of our flawed, subjective perspective. There are a lot of “facts” in the Indiana Jones films. There are four of them, so far. They all star Harrison Ford. But these facts do not tell us much. Let's try to discover some...truth.
 [PART 1: Does Indiana Jones Believe in God?]
 The beliefs of Indiana Jones are difficult to pin down. In Temple of Doom, which is chronologically first – taking place in 1935 – Jones sees collecting artifacts as a matter of fortune and glory. He witnesses supernatural rituals that cannot be explained. In Raiders of the Lost Ark, which takes place one year later, we see him dismiss the power of the Ark of the Covenant, claiming he does not believe in “superstitious mumbo jumbo.” Shouldn't he believe in the supernatural after his encounter with the Thugee cult? When the Nazis are about to open it, he fears it enough to close his eyes. Afterward, he sees the aftermath of the wrath of God. Years later, he is still somewhat agnostic in his beliefs on his quest to discover the Holy Grail. He finds it and learns that it truly does grant eternal life and contains magical healing properties. Then many years later, as he travels to learn the secrets of the Crystal Skull, he is still a highly skeptical man. In the Last Crusade, the villainous Walter Donovan tells Jones to ask himself what he believes in, but even as he performs the trials of the Grail, he utilizes his intellect more than his belief in Jesus Christ as the savior.
 AUDIO 2
 Early in The Last Crusade, Jones asks Marcus Brody is he believes in the Holy Grail. Brody responds that at his age, it's best to simply take some things on faith. What Brody is saying is that there are practical benefits to believing in God whether God exists or not. Pragmatic arguments for belief are not arguments that God definitely exists. Rather, they are arguments that belief itself is rational because it contains benefits over non-belief. 17th century French philosopher and theologian Blaise Pascal famously stated that no matter how small the probability that God exists, as long as it is a positive, non-zero probability, the benefit – or “utility” -- of theistic belief is greater than the utility of disbelief. In short, in one believes in God and God exists, Pascal wagered, one would likely be rewarded by God with a positive afterlife: heaven. If one believes in God and God does not exist, this belief would cost nothing. Nothing lost, nothing gained. If one disbelieves in God and God does not exist, again, nothing lost or gained, but if one disbelieves in God and God DOES exist, the non-believer may suffer through a negative afterlife: hell. Brody's assertion that at his age, it's best to take some things on faith. The implication is that he would rather believe in God and potentially benefit from God's salvation than not. There are counter-arguments to this conclusion.   
 First, non-believers might argue that dedicating one's life to God on the extremely marginal possibility that he exists is nonsense and would cause more harm or even waste to one's life than non-belief. Second, the Wager presumes God's intentions. Would non-belief alone to be enough to banish someone to a “fiery pit”? Also, which God? Which religion? Whether Jones believes or not, he was apparently raised Christian based on his father's work and the fact that when Jones curses, saying “Jesus Christ,” his father slaps him for “blasphemy.” So, even if Jones believes in God, and it turned out to be the Christian God, which denomination does he belong to? Does that matter to God? There are other pragmatic arguments for belief in God, and again, it relies on a kind of simplistic equation: Doing α helps to bring about β . It is morally desirable that β. Therefore, it is prima facie morally desirable to do α. Prima facie roughly means correct until proven otherwise.  
  AUDIO 3
  Using this equation, one argues that since belief in God can create moral behavior, then whether God exists or not – the belief is desirable or good. In these films, however, we see an argument against this equation. The Nazis have religious convictions. In Raiders of the Lost Ark, they have been instructed to discover and retrieve the Ark of the Covenant to help their war effort. Their beliefs did not make them morally correct. In Temple of Doom, the Thugee cult have religious convictions. They worship their god, Kali, and they also sacrifice human beings and enslave children. Their beliefs did not make them morally correct. In The Last Crusade, the Nazis' beliefs come into play again, but also the beliefs of Walter Donovan. He must believe in God in order to believe in the power of the Holy Grail of Jesus Christ. His belief did not make him morally correct. Some people do moral wrongs in spite of their beliefs and some perform moral wrongs BECAUSE of their beliefs. If belief in God, in and of itself, can produce both positive and negative results, then one could argue that theistic belief is a morally neutral endeavor.   
 [PART 2: What is the Nature of God?]
 AUDIO 4
 The manner in which the Indiana Jones movies treat religious artifacts says a lot about how people understand or misunderstand the Abrahamic God and “magic.” In the film, Marcus Brody says that he who carries the Ark into battle is invincible, suggesting that if the Nazis use it, they will be able to conquer the world. The film does not go into any greater detail than that. The Book of Joshua speaks of the Ark much in the same light. In the Battle of Jericho, the Israelites carried the Ark around the city once a day for seven days. The walls of Jericho fell, and the Israelites took the city. But the Ark is not a weapon. The Israelites are the chosen people of God, and with God is on their side due to their reverance of the Ark as a symbol of the covenant between them, they are victorious. But both the Nazis and Jones and company interpret it as meaning that the Ark is a magical object promising luck in battle. This assigns a spiritual power to the Ark AND takes away the agency of God. The Ark kills the Nazis but only after they look into it. It is also suggested that Indiana and Marion only survive by closing their eyes. If God did not want the Nazis to have the Ark, couldn't he just...not have them have the Ark? Isn't he God?   
 Why would he potentially kill Indiana and Marion if they accidentally opened their eyes? Doesn't he know they are not Nazis? Does the film imply that if he Nazis never opened the Ark and used it in battle, it would function for them the same way it did for the Israelites? Why would God allow that? Yes, the Nazis are killed by the power of God and Jones was saved because, narratively, of course that had to happen, but the film suggests that the Ark works as an object imbued with “magic” by God rather than as an extension of himself. Something that theoretically could be misused. I will explain why that makes no sense in a moment, but for now: The Holy Grail. First things first, this is an Arthurian work of fiction and has almost nothing to do with the Bible. The Holy Grail is Bible fan fiction. With that out of the way, in the films, the grail is as Biblically accurate as the Ark. After surviving the traps, Jones meets The Grail Knight. This ancient man believes that only those who are worthy in the eyes of God can pass through the traps and find the Grail, but that does not seem to be true. The challenges do not require any personal conviction or real faith. They require an understanding of how to use scholarly knowledge. Jones knows what a "penitent" man would do, and he ducks to avoid being decapitated. He knows the name of God -- though there are actually man -- and he makes it through the next challenge.   
 AUDIO 5
 The next challenge is an invisible bridge. Donovan and Elsa make it through these challenges as well after they have been solved by Jones. The Grail itself doe not even judge the morality or belief of those who use it. The final challenge is to guess that Jesus Christ -- a carpenter -- probably did not have a lot of gold lying around. These challenges require far more knowledge than faith. In the Abrahamic faiths, God does NOT imbue objects with magical properties that can function independent of himself because the existence of magic – meaning power that exists outside of the auspices of God – would be blasphemous because its existence would automatically limit the omnipotence of God. If magic exists, it means human beings can tap into something scholars call the “metadivine realm” or utilize the power of other gods which Jews and Christians do not believe in. Yet, in these films, clearly other gods exist. In the Temple of Doom, the cultists channel to power of Kali to remove someone's heart and have the victim continue living to be sacrificed. Magic stones also exist. In the Indiana Jones movies, the Abrahamic God probably exists based on the evidence, but he exists in such a way that he is not omnipotent. There are conditions of his power, and he is not the lone god in the universe.   
 This is not unheard of. 20th century philosopher Michael Martin called this The Finite God Theodicy. A theodicy is an attempt to discover why an allegedly loving God permits evil to occur. The Finite God Theodicy says that God is good but NOT all powerful, and that explains why he can be good AND the world can be less than good. This may explain why Jones' beliefs are so muddled. He has seen some evidence of God, but he has also witnessed evidence that if there is a God, he is not all-powerful. How does someone raised Christian reconcile this except to take a position of neutrality or agnosticism? That may be the case here. So, the nature of Abrahamic God in the films – a being who has the world's best interests at heart but is not capable of solving all problems – might seem strange to some believers, but it is actually consistent with one of the most common philosophical justifications for the existence of both evil and a loving God.    
 AUDIO 6
 If the Indiana Jones series has a unifying theory, even more than theological concerns about God and religion, it is that truth is dangerous. Indiana Jones is a professor, but he deals in facts of the mundane. In Raiders of the Lost Ark, Sallah tells Jones that the Ark should not be found. It should not be disturbed. We should learn no more of it. When it is found, Belloch and the Nazis make the mistake of looking into the Ark. Jones' solution to surviving is closing his eyes. Not looking. Learning the secrets of the Ark is dangerous. Truth is dangerous. In the Last Crusade, Jones and the Nazis discover the Holy Grail, but the truth it contains cannot be shared with the world. It is too dangerous. The grail cannot leave its resting place. In the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Spalko wants to learn more about the universe and asks the interdimensional beings for more knowledge. They give it to her, but this power overloads her, and she is vaporized. The “truth” of the Indiana Jones film series is that, for us, there can be no truth. Our epistemological concerns and paradoxes may always remain that way. There can only be facts as we perceive them.