Atheist professor myth

The atheist professor myth is an urban legend, often told through chain emails, in which an atheist professor attempts to disprove the existence of God and is subsequently embarrassed by a wise Christian student in front of the whole class.

Despite the strawman nature of the professor and the often-fallacious arguments used by the student, especially the claim that evil is the absence of God, this myth has become quite popular among Christians for decades and variations of it predate the internet.

The most famous variation claims the student to be a young Albert Einstein. His decidedly unorthodox religious views apparently didn't occur to whoever wrote this.

Elite military variation
In other examples of the same variation, it's not a SEAL, but a Marine. In real life, both groups would probably consider such behaviour as "conduct unbecoming" which could result in a Also, it often  It also clearly attempts to celebrate the machismo of the SEAL/Marine rather than be any sort of semi-coherent debate on the deity.

Existence through absence
The story about a student humiliating a fictional professor is based on a fallacy called mistaking the map for the territory, also known as reification. We should first notice that using the presented logic, one could claim that poverty does not exist, since it is just a lack of wealth, that scurvy does not exist, since it is just a lack of vitamin C, that vacuum doesn't exist, since it is just an absence of matter, or even that sorrow does not exist, since it is an absence of happiness. These statements are obviously nonsensical.

The error leading to the statements "cold does not exist because it is an absence of heat" and "darkness does not exist because it is an absence of light" is that the story conflates human perceptions of physical phenomena with laws governing them at the microscopic level. Although cold is indeed a weaker thermal motion of molecules and darkness is an absence of photons, this does not change the fact that humans perceive weaker thermal motion of their bodies as cold and the absence of photons hitting their retinas as darkness. Therefore, even though cold and darkness do not exist as fundamental physical phenomena, they do exist as human perceptions, or qualia. Since "good" and "evil" are human perceptions and cannot be identified with any fundamental physical forces, the whole analogy falls apart.

A further problem with claiming that evil is an "absence of God" is that it implies that God is not omnipresent. Also, the problem of evil can be rephrased as the 'problem of pain' or the 'problem of suffering'. The idea of an omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent God absenting Himself in ways that conveniently allow suffering is as hard for Christians (or other Abrahamic monotheists) to explain as the one of a good God allowing evil, unless one resorts to such handwaving escape hatches as "God works in mysterious ways", of course.

Dependence on Coincidence
Both the Navy SEAL and the dropped chalk story rely on coincidence to prove the existence of God. Is God real? Well, that Marine appeared and punched him! Is God real? Well, that chalk fell and didn't break! Both of these occurrences, while improbable, are not impossible; using similar logic, one could conclude God is real if a penny lands on its side once in ten-thousand tosses. If God were to take an immediate interest in those situations, and arrange them in such a way as to prove His existence, you'd think He'd do it in a more eye-catching way: Writing his name on the chalkboard, summoning lighting into the classroom, or temporarily suspending gravity would all make for far more interesting demonstrations of power, though even those would not definitively prove the existence of God.

"Atheists get pwnd!!"
While stories about a student like Einstein humiliating an atheist professor might make for very entertaining Chick Tracts, they probably don't convert anyone. Rather, they function mostly as a way of reinforcing things that Christians want to hear and already believe to be true, and make them feel smart about doing so.

The Navy SEAL variation manages to be rather stupid. The crux of the story is the obviously hypocritical behavior of the student. He tells the professor he fought overseas to protect his right to say things he disagrees with, right after physically assaulting him for saying things he disagreed with. Additionally, the SEAL never addresses the professor's argument in the first place, since his only reply is to use/threaten force — which is meant to shut down discussion rather than establish the truth of the matter. Some atheists have attempted to disprove the existence of God by challenging God to strike them dead; would the SEAL have then struck them dead? The SEAL also assumes that God, supposedly omnipotent and omnipresent, is incapable of multi-tasking.

The dropped chalk version simply relies on a cheap strawman atheist who seems to think that chalk breaks every time it hits the ground or if a single accident happens, it somehow proves the existence of God. This version is especially stupid since most real atheists would consider spending an entire semester trying to disprove the existence of a god they don't even believe in to begin with to be a complete waste of time. That would be like a Christian professor spending an entire semester trying to convince his students that Thor doesn't exist when he could be using that time to actually educate his students. The whole premise doesn't even make sense.

Finally, much like the argument from first cause, none of these examples establish which god or gods are in question. The elite military variation is particularly problematic if you consider why that soldier had been to Iraq and Afghanistan in the first place. Also, in 2021, cynics would suggest that if God has been helping US forces in Afghanistan, then he hasn't been been doing a very good job of it. Also, Yawheh and Allah are supposedly the exact same God using different aliases based on the language of his original worshippers; thus, in any conflict between followers of Abrahamic religions, God would be faced with a conflict of interest that raises the question of whose side (if any) He is actually on — if anything, it would logically make more sense for Him to wash His hands of His followers' petty squabbles.

Stereotypes utilized
All variations of the myth employ various stereotypes. The professor is implied to be part of a liberal plot to brainwash impressionable students. Modern variations often describe the professor as being a card-carrying member of such liberal bogeymen as the ACLU or NAACP, even though these groups have nothing to do with the story and serve only to poison the well by characterizing the professor as a wicked progressive. The professor is always described as being extremely aggressive and rude towards people of faith. This becomes particularly ironic in the Navy SEAL version, as the student literally attacks the professor. The professor is sometimes said to be a Vietnam War draft-dodger, to contrast him with the student who served in the military. In recent versions of the myth, the professor is often said to have voted for Barack Obama. No doubt we'll soon be seeing Atheist Professors who voted for Hillary (e.g., see Gavin McInnes).

If the school where the incident took place is mentioned, it is almost always the University of Southern California, a college historically known for liberal activism.

The core of every variation of the myth is the idea that atheists are obsessed with disproving the existence of God. While some people like this do exist, most scientifically-minded atheists in the modern day recognize that the existence of God is not falsifiable, and instead focus on the negative effects that organized religion has on the world, and/or focus on the lack of evidence for certain beliefs while emphasizing that the on the subject of religion is atheism or agnosticism. Certain arguments for disproving the existence of God do exist, but none of them are presented in these myths, which instead involve people who think a piece of chalk not breaking when it hits the floor is conclusive proof that (the Christian) God is real.

Even though the professor is described as a devout atheist who has reigned supreme for decades, he is always brought to his knees by common arguments that any atheist who has debated with a Christian before will have heard. This obsession with "one single proof" dominates Christian debate tactics.

The myth of Einstein being a devout believer in God serves as the critical "punchline" to the original urban legend. Einstein was a well-known agnostic or pantheist (his exact views are difficult to pin down, but he made it clear in his letters that he was not an atheist and, conversely, did not believe in a personal God). No account of this story appears in any biography or sourced story about Einstein and it is unanimously agreed to have never happened.

As in many conservative urban legends, the student in modern variations of the myth is described as being a Navy SEAL who proudly killed people for his country in Afghanistan and Iraq. Some versions of the story have the professor insulting the student for his military service.

Some versions of the story end with the teacher running out of the room and the student teaching the class about Jesus and Christianity, even though a solid majority of Americans are Christian and even the non-Christians would already be aware of these concepts. This is because many of these urban legends take place in an alternate universe where Christians are an oppressed minority (we're looking at you, Jack Chick).

Resulting paranoid beliefs
Without justifying any evidence at all that atheist professors are pushing their beliefs on students, the Christian Examiner has begun urging parents to prepare their students with extreme Apologetics courses for the evil machinations of manipulative educators. The fear of children changing their minds about things as they learn about the world is just too horrifying to consider.

Internet meme and parodies
The sheer stupidity of this story makes it ripe for parody. These often exaggerate the number of liberal organizations the professor belongs to, the absurdity of the student's argument, the punishment the professor receives, and the topic they are debating. These parodies often end with a twist where the student is revealed to be a famous person, like the Einstein myth.

Liberal Muslim homosexual ACLU lawyer professor and abortion doctor
A common example template from which other parodies derive, believed to have originated on 4chan circa 2011, is as follows:

Ex-Mormon version
Warning: includes Mormon lingo, beware all ye who enter here. From /r/exmormon:

The Christian philosopher
From r/RoughRomanMemes:

The Vandal magister
From 4chan, saved as a screenshot on Know Your Meme.

The Alawite professor
From Reddit.

Film adaptation
A feature film loosely based on the atheist professor chain email called God's Not Dead was released in March 2014. The film's protagonist, a young Christian college student, is told by his aggressive atheist professor that he must prove God exists or fail the class. At the climax of the film, the professor is brought to liberal tears by being asked "Why do you hate god?" The film currently boasts a rating of 15% on Rotten Tomatoes, and has been criticized by secular and religious reviewers alike.