An Ode to Black Cats
How Naturalism Fails to Ground Reality
Atheists on X are up to their dirty tricks again. So desperate, itโs laughable.
I came across this meme comparing theism to a man walking into a pitch-black cave looking for a black cat that isnโt there, then yelling โfound it.โ
Itโs crass, unimaginative, and on closer inspection ends up defending theism, not atheism, because the atheist doesnโt understand its actual implications.
(1) It presumes the existence of both black cats and caves without evidence
(2) It depends on prior human experience that hasnโt been confirmed
Letโs dig into each of those points deeper, and Iโll show you what I mean.
In the Shoes of the Spelunker
The meme presumes the existence of both dark caves and black cats. Someone could argue both exist because theyโve been experienced, but the same argument applies to God.
Countless people throughout history claim direct experience of him. Atheists will tell you those experiences are bunk. But if experience alone fails to establish Godโs existence, experience alone fails to establish the existence of black cats and caves too, yet nobody questions caves and cats.
Talk about double standards.
Atheists could counter with the prospect of repeatability, but that doesnโt solve the problem. There are witnesses throughout history who claim repeated contact with caves, cats, and God, so weโve circled back to square one.
Maybe invisibility is a good argument? God is invisible to the human eye, so he canโt exist. Not quite. You see, gravity and the magnetic field are both invisible. All we see are their effects. Yet no one questions their existence.
Then thereโs the problem of prior knowledge. For the atheist to declare the black cat isnโt there, he needs to not just know the cat exists somewhere in reality, he must also know its location and verify the specific cat in question is the actual cat rather than a lookalike.
There is good news. If a lookalike exists, that presupposes the existence of an original cat, otherwise it couldnโt look alike to the original.
Bad news? There are lots of lookalikes to God throughout history, so they too must presuppose an original, if weโre to be consistent.
All the above considered, the man searching the cave is the real honest investigator. Sure, maybe he forgot a flashlight. But at least he has the open mind to consider the possibility of the cat and the cave as a possible haven for it.
Whoโs Actually Fumbling in the Dark
The man in the meme, representing the theist, is the one acting rationally. He treats human experience as a legitimate source of evidence, despite its flaws, and searches for the truth using the tools available to him.
The atheist relying on naturalism alone is the one batting around blind for an answer he already decided isnโt there.
Naturalism presumes the cave, the cat, and the trustworthiness of human experience without ever justifying any of it. If the Creator God of the Bible exists, the universe was made for his imagers to tend, explore, and gradually understand through experience and reason. If God doesnโt exist, everything reduces to impossible accident.
Thinking, perception, intelligibility, even the reliability of reasoning itselfโฆall illusions taken on blind faith.
Anyone familiar with philosophy may recognize the meme as a rehash of Bertrand Russellโs infamous teapot in space. He argued in 1952 that the exploration for God is akin to a teapot floating somewhere between the Sun and Mars, so tiny that not even the most advanced telescopes could find it. Russell argued the teapot might be there or it might not, but one doesnโt need to believe the person who says itโs there unless they can provide evidence.
Russellโs analogy runs into the same flaws as the black cat meme. In order to even get to the teapot in space, one has to first establish confidently the existence of teapots and space. One has to also establish with confidence the existence of the Sun and Mars and the reliability of evidence. Which can only be accomplished through human experience, the trustworthiness of which is what is being questioned.
The analogy also presumes the presence of only one witness. But what if there were multiple witnesses to the teapot being launched into space? Say at least three people saw it. Does the teapot between the Sun and Mars become more or less credible?
What if multiple witnesses saw a black cat enter the cave?
The core issue never changes. Naturalism always borrows from the order, logic, intelligibility, and reliable perception that make sense in a designed universe alone.
Strip out an intelligent source behind reality, and thereโs no reason to trust senses, memory, or reasoning at all. For anything. Not even science.
The One Bizarre Movement That Gets It
Unfortunately, the LGBTQ movement grasps this contradiction better than regular atheists.
The underlying logic of the movement runs like this: If everything is unverifiable and human perception is untrustworthy, โnaturalโ becomes whatever anyone decides it is, and one personโs word carries no more weight than anotherโs.
We can do whatever is right in our own eyes.
If thereโs no transcendent design behind human nature, and no objective standard grounding what a body or a self actually is, then nobody has standing to call any self-identification wrong. Calling it wrong requires an objective โnaturalโ that exists independent of personal preference. An actual cat, not a probable cat.
LGBTQers apply the existing philosophy honestly, all the way to its logical end, and arrive somewhere humans would rather not look.
Youโre a man who โlovesโ another man? Sleep around with him, pretend youโre married, adopt or buy a toddler and then abuse him together.
Youโre man who thinks heโs a woman? By all means, lop off your balls.
You think youโre a pig? Go roll around in mud all day, eat beyond your appetite, fatten up so someone can sell you at the state fair or make bacon.
You think youโre a dog? Spend all day outside, sniff and lick your butt, never bathe, and catch flees.
After all, thereโs no reality except what we make, right? Gotta live your truth even if that means doing so at the expense of others. If anyone tries to contest your redefining of reality, claim victimhood, despite your choices being entirely self-directed and the consequences self-inflicted.
When God is off the table, nothing makes sense, nothing is reliable, anything goes, and humanity nosedives to hell.
No Brakes on the Way Down
Many cultures across history have recorded profound encounters with the divine that shaped ethics, laws, and civilization. These experiences have consistently pointed toward a personal reality greater than ourselves.
Dismissing them while accepting ordinary sensory data as reliable creates an inconsistent standard that undermines the atheist position from the inside out.
You canโt have your black cat and an absent God too.
Modern movements that reject fixed design in favor of self-defined reality are the product of ungrounded naturalist assumptions. Mental health struggles, disgusting perversions, bodily butchery, rampant child abuse, and generational decay become not only acceptable, but expected.
Naturalism offers no brakes against depravity because naturalism rejects transcendent accountability for rationality, experience, morality, and reality.
A worldview claiming intellectual superiority while standing on folding toothpicks doesnโt deserve one second longer in the spotlight. Time we kicked it into the dustbin of history.
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