Ken Ham’s absurd apocryphal tale about him “outsmarting” his professor reminded me of the outrageous tall tale floating around apparently as early as 1999 where a pious religious student contradicts an arrogant atheist professor.

In that story, the student stops the teacher in his tracks with a supposedly “brilliant” argument (if you squint and look at it sideways from a distance and not for very long, that is). The last line ends with the memorable words, “And that student’s name? ALBERT EINSTEIN!”

That catch phrase has since become shorthand for guffawing at any obviously bogus story masquerading as true.

Ham inspired me to write a variation with a slightly different ending…

Years ago, a handsome, brilliant, and virtuous young student in Australia, after single-handedly saving a busload of blind orphans from plunging off a cliff during recess, returned to class where his professor, an amoral and nihilistic atheist who was notorious for sadistically humiliating religious students whenever he could, began lecturing on the basics of the theory of evolution. The student, bored with this nonsensical claptrap, began doodling figures, and without really trying, casually solved the mystery of the Planck particle. He idly mused he would call it the “God’s Not Dead Particle,” but he didn’t care that much because what he really wanted to do was to read his Bible, which he kept hidden inside a hollowed-out calculus textbook. The professor, always demanding slavish attention from the class, noticed the student’s distraction. Twirling his long, black, waxed mustache, he walked up to the student’s desk, and standing menacingly over him, asked the student what thoughts he had on the lecture so far. The student tossed his scribblings into the trash, and without a glance, deliberately and accurately threw his pencil over his shoulder directly into the eye of a Muslim ninja terrorist who was about to lob a bomb into the class from the fifth story window where he had climbed. The Muslim ninja terrorist screamed and fell, his bomb exploding in his hands, leaving nothing of him but a few shreds of black cloth. Ignoring all this commotion, the student and the professor locked eyes for a long, tense moment, and the student said, “Were you there?” The professor was completely nonplussed. Struck mute. In a flash of stunning epiphany, he suddenly realized that all he had been teaching was false, and that the biblical story of Genesis must be literally, factually, absolutely true in every way. He briefly tried to feign frustration at what he called the student’s absurd remark, but he knew it was over. The game was up. The conspiracy had been solved. He dismissed the class early. That afternoon, the professor resigned, moved far away, changed his name, shaved off his long, black, waxed mustache, accepted Jesus as his personal savior, married a lovely blond and blue-eyed preacher’s daughter, and began a new life as a fundamentalist Baptist minister. And that student’s name? KEN HAM!

Is the story true?

As true as anything you’ll find in the Creation Museum.

(Screenshot via YouTube)

