Several years ago, I heard a caller to a talk radio show make the claim that he could prove God doesn’t exist. Since I am a Christian apologist in my spare time, I wanted to see what this amazing proof of the non-existence of God was (despite the fact that it is impossible to prove a negative).

The caller said that God couldn’t exist because, in his words, “crap exists.” He did not mean this euphemistically, as a reference to bad things—although that might have been a better argument for him. Instead, he meant “fecal matter.” He later also said that a woman’s period proves God does not exist.

This kind of “proof” is enough to make any thinking person go, “Huh?” After all, it would be sorta like saying that unicorns don’t exist because horses have to wear horseshoes. In other words, even if God does not exist, the argument is a non-sequitur. It’s also a bogus argument because, in order for it to be valid, the definition of God would need to include “a being who would not create people that produced fecal matter or had monthly periods”—a definition of God that would be quite unique, to say the least.

There is also the assumption the atheist makes about what the nature of God is. How does the atheist know that God would not do something? It is certainly logically possible for God to design people who give off waste products. So why would this be a problem prima face?

But there is more.

This argument also assumes the purpose for which God would design something. People don’t like dealing with fecal matter because it’s nasty and smelly and unpleasant for us, but that doesn’t mean that fecal matter serves no purpose at all. After all, millions of bacteria live in it. Who’s to say that God wouldn’t have designed people to produce waste material because He had in mind another creation that would benefit from it? It is only if we assume that God’s entire purpose is for the atheist’s comfort that we could accept this argument.

This argument, therefore, is easily dispatched. It is surprising, however, to see how many atheists use variations of this same argument. It goes like this: “God wouldn’t do X, therefore He doesn’t exist.” X can be anything the atheist wants to argue.

But even if an atheist could come up with something else that we can perceive no practical value for, how would that disprove God? Just because you would not design something a certain way does not mean that God would not do so. And therefore, just because something is not the way you would have made it does not mean that God does not exist.

This would be like saying, “If I were to design a computer operating system, I would make it so it wouldn’t crash every fifteen minutes. Windows crashes every fifteen minutes. Therefore, no one designed it.”

While Apple computer aficionados will agree with this just out of spite for Microsoft, it is most certainly the case that Windows was designed by the people at Microsoft. And just because it doesn’t work the way you would have made it does not make the programmers non-existent.

Some may yet take this argument a bit further. For example, some may say the evidence of Windows proves that programmers make mistakes. Therefore, people make mistakes. But a perfect God would not make mistakes. Since God created people who make mistakes, God created a mistake. Therefore, God does not exist.

Can you see how this is the same argument as before? “God would not do X, therefore He does not exist.” Or, “God would not create flawed people, therefore He does not exist.”

This argument has the same problems as the previous one. It assumes both the nature of God (that God, qua God, cannot create flawed people) and the intention for which people are created (that the purpose of God creating people was to make them flawless). Furthermore, this assumes a definition of perfection and automatically defines flawed people as outside of it.

But if God designed the world to have flawed people such that He might demonstrate His mercy and power toward them, then their very flaws are in fact the means for God doing so. And thus, those flaws are not an imperfection in God’s plan. Flawed people may very well fit perfectly into God’s plan.

It is only when you think of God in an anthropocentric manner that you would see any problems arise. But God exists theocentrically, not anthropocentrically. And God’s plans are not just for people, but ultimately for Himself.

With that in mind, it is obvious that the atheist’s entire line of argument cannot stand unless the atheist himself is God. For all he has proven is that the atheist would not do X, therefore the atheist did not create the world.

A conclusion not in dispute.