*** WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD! ***

I’ve had a few conversations about the new Indiana Jones movie in the last couple of days, and the one complaint I keep hearing above all else is the fact that extraterrestrial aliens are now a part of the Indiana Jones canon. People seem to think that the idea of extraterrestrials on Earth is somehow less plausible than, say, spirits flying out of the Biblical Ark of the Covenant and melting a bunch of Nazis in Raiders of the Lost Ark, or the ability of Mola Ram to sink his hand through the chests of Thuggee sacrificial humans to pull out their (still beating) hearts in the Temple of Doom, or even the existence of the Holy Grail itself in The Last Crusade. If you look at it objectively, the reality of these plot devices is no more contentious (and some may argue LESS contentious) than the notion of extraterrestrials visiting prehistoric civilizations and aiding them to become vastly more advanced than conventional wisdom can explain. I’m not saying I believe that aliens visited the ancient Mayans, Egyptians, or anyone else…but I do think it’s misguided to assume that a religious “supernatural” occurrence is any more plausible than an extraterrestrial one.