Why Religion Makes No Sense In The 'Indiana Jones' Universe
Legendary adventurer/dirtbag academic Indiana Jones is soon returning for yet another sequel – and since Indy has to be pushing 80 at this point, perhaps it will chronicle his epic quest to track down some Epsom salts for a nice warm bath. We can’t help but wonder if Indy, at this stage of his life, will be confronting his mortality to some extent – which further begs the question: what does Indiana Jones believe in, exactly?
Think about it; he was once just an average non-believer who, in Raiders of the Lost Ark, was present when a relic from the Old Testament friggin’ liquified an island full of Nazis. You’d think something like that would change a person, from a spiritual standpoint. Then in The Last Crusade, he witnessed firsthand the otherworldly powers of Jesus’ old drinking cup.
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After being presented with empirical evidence of Christ’s divinity, wouldn’t Indy become a devoted Christian at that point? If I saw a cruddy old goblet melt away my dad’s gunshot wound, you can bet I’d be in church every damn Sunday, and probably try to convince everyone else to do the same. Then again, years earlier, Indiana Jones also witnessed the magic of the Sankara Stones, seemingly proving all of Hinduism as well.
So after the tenets of two different major religions were basically proven, what did Indy believe? Well, at the end of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, he gets married in a Christian church – but at that point, he’s also learned just that there are alien-like interdimensional creatures, illustrating that parallel realities exist, and implicitly kind of blowing up the idea that God, any God, has a divine plan for the world.
If Indiana Jones’ brain hasn’t been turned to oatmeal by this point, maybe whatever wacky supernatural knick-knack he encounters in the fifth movie will give him some clue as to where his soul will spend eternity once he shuffles off this mortal coil.
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Thumbnail: Lucasfilm
