Proof #42: Listen When God Talks

The height of mockery:

You know, I prayed to God to help me decide which color couch to buy, and the next thing I hear is God’s voice in my head! And he starts telling me how to build a nuclear fusion reactor that will completely solve the world’s energy problems! It’s some kind of crazy laser-pumped Tokamak thing. I have no idea what he was talking about, but I was the vessel for his spirit, and I have transcribed the messages and diagrams that God sent to my brain in these 14 notebooks. You can see that we now have complete construction details for a perfect, pollution free, inexpensive fusion reactor — Praise the Lord!

Marshall Brain’s logic here is thus:

• If God exists, we should see X.
• We do not see X.
• Therefore, God does not exist.

This isn’t bad logic. But the premise is still flawed because Brain has failed to demonstrate why we would expect to see X. In this particular example, why would God give the instructions to build a “perfect, pollution free, inexpensive fusion reactor” to someone who has no idea what was being communicated? This hearkens back to the proof where Brain insisted that Jesus should have given instructions for nuclear proliferation to first century Jewish peasants.

This proof is proof of nothing until Brain can demonstrate why we would expect to see X. X, in this case, being sheer Christian genius coming only from prayer. Why would God reveal all of the secrets of His universe just to prove His own existence? Moreover, why would He reveal these secrets to random people not in a position to do anything with the information?