That black cat. Part 2

That black cat

Part 2: Tragic – despair, for all is emptiness

However, we must return to the punch line: “the cat isn’t even there”.

If this is true, then it is an utterly heart-rending condemnation of humanity’s wasted efforts in a futile attempt to find what is not there. If we just take this in for a moment: consider the countless pleas for help, the desperate hope, the senseless sacrifices – all futile, wasted effort, betrayed hopes, unrequited love, calling into the wind for help that never comes, or even simply calling for an answer – but one you never hear, but there is always someone to lie to you, saying that they heard a whisper of something, and so you cling onto that. I think this is how self-confident (and sometimes aggressive) atheists view the matter. And, of course, if the cat is not there, it would be sensible to stop looking for it. We must not gather up crumbs and say that at least searching for the cat gives you something to do and a bit of exercise. If the cat is not there, there are better alternatives – ways to spend our lives that will produce better fruits.

And, to switch the illustration, I think it would also be wrong to use the idea of the cat in the box, which may, or may not, be dead, (and it is dead really) but if we don’t ever look in the box, then we will never know it’s dead, and so we are free to go on believing that it’s alive really. We must always go with the truth. Wherever that leads us, that is the path we should follow.

This also takes us to a crucial matter. We have acknowledged before the powerful truth that the benefits of believing in God are largely realised whether God actually exists or not – just provided the person truly believes he does. However, this truth needs to be taken up truthfully – and we have seen that there are perfectly legitimate ways to live a life of faith where you overtly accept that it is your commitment to your faith values that is at the heart of your belief. Taken to its furthest, this sort of faith is actually compatible with accepting that God does NOT exist – but you believe in the value of love, forgiveness, compassion etc – all those values which the person of God embodies. However, this sort of commitment to faith as a way of life usually relies on a reasonable possibility that God exists. We can happily accept the ambivalence of the evidence, and maybe God isn’t real, but we have a feeling in our bones that he does exist – and this is a legitimate conclusion because the evidence does also point to this possibility. In this case, we are back to the religious believer who acknowledges that finding God can be extremely difficult, because in that dark room the cat can prove pretty elusive – but don’t give up; keep trying and you will find him.