Some time back some people got it in their heads to see if cats would step on the Koran. Why did they decide to test this? Who the frak knows. But the end result was a whole lot of YouTube videos made by Muslims showing cats refusing to step on Korans. This was touted as evidence that cats know that Korans are special, and thus the Koran is the true and inviolable word of God, and thus everyone should convert to Islam.

There are two immediately obvious problems with this:

1: It’s really easy to edit videos. Cats don’t like stepping on things they’re uncertain about, so getting footage of them not stepping on open books on the floor should be fairly easy.

2: I can think of other supernatural explanations for why a cat might not step on a book. If we’re positing cats having knowledge of good and evil and the ability to detect and avoid evil, they would avoid stepping on a Necronomicon. And so their avoidance of a Koran might have a different interpretation…

It’s a dumb thing. But then… this is the internet we’re talking about. “Dumb things” are its bread and butter.

If you’re of a mind to, wander over to YouTube and search for “cat walking on Koran/Quran” or some variation thereof. Bunches of videos, the vast majority of which are from Muslims either carrying out the “challenge” or reacting to other videos.

I’ve not seen too many contradictory videos. Possibly because how many non-Muslims have Korans, and how many of *those* have cats, and how many of *those* want to go to the bother. But there’s this guy, who is a Christian apologist who has a bunch of videos about how Islam is wrong, and he took up the challenge. Included at the beginning are a number of clips of cats avoiding Korans for your viewing pleasure:

Which led to this “reaction video” featuring a highly excitable young guy who promptly goes into vitriolic denial mode:

Part of the denial is the claim that those aren’t *real* Korans, but instead dictionaries. So, the Christian guy goes back to the drawing board and tries it again, this time going to some pains to show that those are indeed actual Arabic language Korans, and that the cat will nonchalantly step on them for some food.

Which has led to this reaction video, which this time seemed to accept that indeed the cat is stepping on the Koran, but that the cat is somehow being forced into it (with the gentle offer of food, which I can assure you is no effective way to “force” a cat into doing something the cat doesn’t want to). And as a result of the acceptance of a cat stepping on a Koran… threats of violence come out. Contain your shock.

The whole thing is patently absurd. But here we are, in an age when not only are we looking at manned missions to Mars within just a few years, but also a return of astrology; cars shot into solar orbit while more people are buying into the idea of a flat Earth; genetic engineering curing diseases while people are rejecting vaccines; incredible advanced in understanding the basic nature of the universe while more and more people are believing that the world is only 6,000 years old. People are using technologies that simply didn’t exist a generation ago to argue about whether a cat will step on a frikken’ book.

Fine. Great. Modern civilization is doomed.