This is a True Story...

[Reality Amplifier]

I was one of about 20 people who received the email below from my sister-in-law (she’s a Christian).

 

I suspect that there is a dismaying majority of people out there, who, when they read the words "this is a true story" they frequently just stop and accept such hearsay as true without further thought or investigation.

 

Of course, it turns out this story isn't true - The Atheist Professor At USC Who Encountered God Through a Piece of Chalk. I forwarded the Truth or Fiction link to everybody that was copied on the original email…without any additional comment.

 

My question for all of you: What comments (if any)would you send back to your Christian friends or family members if you were copied on such hooey?

 

This one should keep us all thinking.

 

I chose #2, now you pick one.

 

This is a true story of something that happened just a few years ago at USC.

 

There was a professor of philosophy there who was a deeply committed atheist.

 

His primary goal for one required class was to spend the entire semester to prove that God couldn't exist.

 

His students were always afraid to argue with him because of his impeccable logic. For twenty years, he had taught this class and no one had ever had the courage to go against him.

 

Sure, some had argued in class at times, but no one had ever really gone against him because of his reputation.

 

At the end of every semester on the last day, he would say to his class of 300 students,

 

"If there is anyone here who still believes in Jesus, stand up!"

 

In twenty years, no one had ever stood up. They knew what he was going to do next. He would say, "Because anyone who believes in God is a fool".

 

If God existed, he could stop this piece of chalk from hitting the ground and breaking. Such a simple task to prove that He is God, and yet He can't do it."

 

And every year, he would drop the chalk onto the tile floor of the classroom and it would shatter

into a hundred pieces.

 

All of the students would do nothing but stop and stare.

 

Most of the students thought that God couldn't exist. Certainly, a number of Christians had slipped through, but for 20 years, they had been too afraid to stand up.

 

Well, a few years ago there was a freshman who happened to enroll. He was a Christian, and had heard the stories about his professor. He was required to take the class for his major, and he was afraid. But for three months that semester, he prayed every morning that he would have the courage to stand up no matter what the professor said, or what the class thought.

 

Nothing they said could ever shatter his faith...he hoped

 

Finally, the day came. The professor said, "If there is anyone here who still believes in God, stand up!"

 

The professor and the class of 300 people looked at him, shocked, as he stood up at the back of the classroom.

 

The professor shouted, "You FOOL!!! If God existed, he would keep this piece of chalk from breaking when it hit the ground!"

 

He proceeded to drop the chalk, but as he did, it slipped out of his fingers, off his shirt cuff, onto

the pleat of his pants, down his leg, and off his shoe. As it hit the ground, it simply rolled away

unbroken. The professor's jaw dropped as he stared at the chalk. He looked up at the young man, and then ran out of the lecture hall.

 

The young man who had stood, proceeded to walk to the front of the room and shared his faith in Jesus for the next half hour. 300 students stayed and listened as he told of God's love for them and of His power through Jesus.

 

You have 2 choices:

 

1. Delete this and never look at it again.

 

2. Pass this along to your Christian and non-Christian friends, giving them encouragement we

all need every day.

 

When you choose option 2, you have chosen to STAND UP.

 

In light of the many jokes we send to one another for a laugh, this is a little different:

This is not intended to be a joke, it's not funny, it's intended to get you thinking..............

 

Isn't it funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then wonder why the world's going to hell.

 

Isn't it funny how we believe what the newspapers say, but question what the Bible says.

 

Isn't it funny how everyone wants to go to heaven provided they do not have to believe, think, say, or do anything the Bible says. Or is it scary?

 

Isn't it funny how someone can say "I believe in God" but still follow Satan (who, by the way, also

"believes" in God ).

 

Isn't it funny how you can send a thousand jokes through e-mail and they spread like wildfire, but

when you start sending messages regarding the Lord, people think twice about sharing.

 

Isn't it funny how the lewd, crude, vulgar and obscene pass freely through cyberspace, but the

public discussion of Jesus is suppressed in the school and workplace.

 

Isn't it funny how someone can be so fired up for Christ on Sunday, but be an invisible Christian the rest of the week.

 

Isn't it funny how when you go to forward this message, you will not send it to many on your

address list because you're not sure what they believe, or what they will think of you for sending

it to them.

 

Isn't it funny how I can be more worried about what other people think of me than what God thinks of me.

 

 

Will YOU pass this on? .. I did

[♦ nivek ♦]

Cool...

 

/dry witted hillbilly sarcasm =1

 

DaYyyYYYum RA, this is a deep ole theological fubar for athiests!

 

Gads, a cute drinking game made into the PowAH ovedaAllMitee! Mite impressed with this buds, I may even add this trick to my majik show..

 

sheeze..

 

kL

[Pariah]

My friend, who is a Christian, was sent this email by someone we both know, andeven she thought it was ridiculous. Especially the "isn't it funny" part.

 

Even if that story was true it wouldn't prove anything anyway.

[Bodhi-in-Training]

My response would be..it's an Urban Legend...and then provide the link

 

http://www.snopes.com/religion/chalk.htm

 

 

I love snopes!

[Reality Amplifier]

There's a link on Truth or Fiction site with USC's response to the story.

 

"The e-mail's story is one that was written to reaffirm faith in miracles and in God" - USC

The irony here is that if the Christian religion were real to begin with, there wouldn't be any reasons for them to make up such stories.

[necrosmith]

LOL...

 

Such drivel is what Christians reassure themselves with?

 

How pathetic!

 

LOL

[Lizard]

I've rec'd or read this one before. I didn't respond then, I don't believe. If I rec'd it again, and since it seems to be going around again, odds are I will..I will forward both the links to everyone who rec'd it..

[Vigile]

LOL...

 

Such drivel is what Christians reassure themselves with?

 

How pathetic!

 

LOL

 

Exactly, what tripe.

 

This story was laughable in so many ways.

 

A few points:

 

What's the professor's name?

 

What's the student's name and where's his first hand testimony?

 

What's the title and number of the class? (this should be easy to verify online)

 

Why weren't any of the above mentioned in the story?

 

Chalk doesn't shatter into 100 pieces when dropped.

 

A Philosophy class that explores the viability of god would be a 300/400 level class and it would never have 300 students in attendance even at a large school like UCLA.

 

The following is an accident, not a miracle. Even xtians in their BS stories are too faithless to argue that god hung the piece of chalk in mid air: "He proceeded to drop the chalk, but as he did, it slipped out of his fingers, off his shirt cuff, onto the pleat of his pants, down his leg, and off his shoe. As it hit the ground, it simply rolled away unbroken."

[♦ ficino ♦]

There are a lot of these e-mail pass-alongs that are not much different from chain letters.

 

A while back I started getting bible reflection mass emails from my brother in law - he added me to a list of twenty or thirty recipients. I just deleted the first two. Then I started getting spam from Christian websites that had pulled out my email address. So on the next one, I replied to my brother in law, asking him not to send more mass emails. A few days later my sister called to say he was very upset. Even my nephew couldn't understand why his uncle wouldn't want to receive the reflections of his dad. So I wrote back explaining about the spam (it was from a site called Dragonslayer). My bro in law said he'd asked that site not to take addresses and send stuff to people. Still, I've never received any more religious emails from my brother in law. I felt a little bad about rejecting my bro in law's ideas, but I was also annoyed that he presumed I wanted to hear them in the first place, plus annoyed that he didn't talk to me himself but left it for my sister to intervene.

[Purple Rhino]

I used to get christian spam from relatives and friends of family members. My solution was to send Pagan spam to everyone listed. For some reason I no longer get email chain letters

 

PR

[Poonis]

There is a common theme of all christian anecdotes: never giving names. In this anecdote, we are not given to know the name of (1)the professor, (2)the student, or (3)the author of such masterful quip.

[Amethyst]

My question for all of you: What comments (if any)would you send back to your Christian friends or family members if you were copied on such hooey?

 

I don't bother replying to such nonsense. I just delete it.

[Checkmate]

I'm with Amethyst. I just delete such spam without opening it. Anything with "Fwd" on it is more than likely some chain letter tripe, and goes straight to the trash.

[greasemonkey]

I used to get a lot of those mass-mailings from my (very religious) aunt. I exercised my right to delete them for a long time, but then she sent one about some kid griping about not being able to pray in school. I wrote a long rebuttal to the message, in essence saying the kid didn't deserve any respect for wishing to disrespect other's beliefs, and why it is so important to keep prayer out of schools; not to mention that there are NO restrictions on prayer, only PUBLIC prayer (and mentioned what Jesus had to say about that).

 

I got a ton of responses from that one. Some were actually grateful for hearing it put into a logical perspective, but most were EXTREMELY un-christian like. I really enjoyed the one where a guy told me to look at a coin sometime where it said "in god we trust" because this is a christian nation. He never replied back when I responded telling him "in god we trust" never appeared on our currency until after the civil war, and was never mandated until the 1950's, right about the same time "under god" was added to the pledge of allegiance.

 

My aunt took me off her list.

[Amethyst]

My aunt used to send me these "Please forward these to your friends" and prayer chain spam mails. I think she just took me off her list after I deleted enough of them.

 

One time I did send her a link to a site where you could look up Internet scams by subject, just because she had sent me some really common urban legend that had been debunked ages ago. Didn't hear anything that indicated she had actually read it, though.

[Megistias]

The first time I encountered that story the student was a Muslim and at a different University.

 

I wonder which is the TRUE story ?

 

/joking

[Kryten]

That is so old I remember hearing it when I first got saved back in the 70s!! Total crap, but, one more time, some people believe it because they WANT to. They need some kind of evidence and, unfortunately for them, this is about as good as it gets.

[trashy]

I have trained my Dad to not send me anything like this without first running it by Snopes.com. My wife enjoys pointing people to Snopes.com. What cracks me up is that fact that a lot of people get upset because you are destroying their fantasyland! They just don't really want to know the truth, and this applies to a lot of areas, not just Christianity.

[Kryten]

Oh, and nice to see you PR!!

[Ex-COG]

When I receive emails like this, I simply look it up on snopes.com, provide the snopes link in my own email, and click "reply to all". Mostly everyone ignores me, but I have noticed I don't get too many of these anymore.

[nirrti]

I would tell them to stop sending me this junk and quit believing everything they read including that book of fairy tales called the Bible.....not in these exact words, of course.

[Skankboy]

I would tell them I WAS that student and have since seen reason...

 

 

 

No. Probably, not. But if they can't take the time to check, that's there own issue...

[Lizard]

Got one today..the "Atheists petition to ban religious broadcasting" one..

 

Looked it up on Snopes..and replied to All who got the same email I did..

[Eponymic]

I see bunk like this and I just keep saying to myself, "Oh yes! I believe! This sounds nothing like any of the rest of those corny, worthless, contrived Christian parables that I used to hear."

 

Give me a flippin' break.

[Asimov]

He proceeded to drop the chalk, but as he did, it slipped out of his fingers, off his shirt cuff, onto

the pleat of his pants, down his leg, and off his shoe. As it hit the ground, it simply rolled away

unbroken. The professor's jaw dropped as he stared at the chalk. He looked up at the young man, and then ran out of the lecture hall.

 

This was not a controlled experiment, were it to be true anyways. It slipped out of his fingers (an accident), and then all this stuff happened. He didn't actually drop the chalk, it slipped out of his hand.