No, Public Universities Aren’t Dominated by Evil Atheist Professors Seeking to Destroy Students’ Faith

The idea that evil, liberal, atheist professors are forcing their students to renounce their faith is an extremely longstanding and pervasive fear among conservative evangelical Christians here in the United States. Right-wing evangelicals have been blaming universities and their supposedly evil, liberal, atheist professors for increasing secularization in society since at least the late nineteenth century.

The trope of the atheist professor forcing his students to renounce God can be found in political speeches, cartoons, internet memes, and even films. Despite the longstanding prevalence of this idea, however, it is, for the most part, entirely unsupported by evidence.

The atheist professor stereotype in the early twentieth century

To give an amusing image of just how far back this goes, I have a book in my personal collection titled The Photo-Drama of Creation that was printed in 1914. That book has this illustration on page 89, depicting a college professor as the literal Devil himself, teaching a student one-on-one, with the caption “COLLEGES TEACHING HIGHER CRITICISM”:

ABOVE: A striking image from an old book I have in my collection (Note: This particular image of the illustration was taken from the version of the book on Archive, not from my personal copy.)

In a speech at the University of Wisconsin–Madison on 5 May 1921, the Democratic politician and orator William Jennings Bryan (lived 1860 – 1925), a progressive populist who was regarded at the time as a member of the far left, famously denounced public universities for taking public funds and teaching evolution, which Bryan considered to be a vile, atheistic doctrine, to their students, thereby indoctrinating students into atheism against their own parents’ wishes. He proclaimed:

“Our classrooms furnish an arena in which a brutish doctrine tears the pieces the religious faith of young men and young women; parents of the children are cordially invited to witness the spectacle.”

In the speech, Bryan went on to demand that professors must stop teaching evolution and return to traditional Protestant theology as the basis of all higher education. Bryan also demanded that President Edward A. Birge of the University of Wisconsin be required to sign a statement specifically affirming that he did indeed believe that the Earth was created by God in seven days exactly as described in the Book of Genesis, that Jesus Christ was born of a virgin, and that all the miracles described in the Bible were historically true, in order to prove that he was not an atheist and that he was indeed morally qualified to serve as the president of a university.

Ironically, President Birge was not at all an atheist in any sense, but rather a devout Protestant who simply believed that science and religion could coexist. Birge actually accused Bryan of inadvertently promoting atheism by promoting the idea that science contradicted traditional Protestantism.

ABOVE: Photograph of Edward A. Birge, the president of the University of Wisconsin whom William Jennings Bryan said needed to sign a paper saying he believed in the Genesis creation story and all the miracles recorded in the Bible in order to prove himself morally qualified to be president of a university

Modern examples of the atheist professor meme

There are countless memes and urban legends that have circulated on the internet about atheist professors supposedly forcing their beliefs on their students. For instance, here is one version of the urban legend from the internet:

“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 attempting 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’ (you’ll see what I mean later).”

“Nobody would go against him because he had a reputation. At the end of every semester, on the last day, he would say to his class of 300 students, ‘If there 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 does believe 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. The students could do nothing but stop and stare. Most of the students were convinced 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 get enrolled in the class. He was a Christian, and had heard the stories about this professor. He had to take the class because it was one of the required classes for his major and he was afraid. But for 3 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 or did 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 could 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 pleats 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 up proceeded to walk to the front of the room and share 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.”

To be very clear, this story is an internet urban legend; it is not true at all and the story itself is wildly implausible. (For instance, a real atheist philosophy professor would consider the idea of spending an entire semester trying to disprove the existence of God a complete waste of time and he would not be so stupid as to propose a dropped piece of chalk as a test of God’s existence.)

There are many other versions of this same legend found on the internet. In some versions of the story, the brave Christian student who stands up to the evil atheist professor turns out to be the young Albert Einstein. (No, really! I am not joking! Here is the article from Snopes debunking it.)

ABOVE: Photograph of the famous physicist Albert Einstein. According to a popular internet urban legend, one of Albert Einstein’s hobbies as a young man was apparently humiliating atheist professors.

The atheist professor myth in movies

In 2014, Pure Flix Entertainment, a conservative, evangelical Christian film company, adapted the popular internet urban legend about the brave Christian student standing up to the evil atheist professor into a film, God’s Not Dead, about a heroic undergraduate student who stands up to his evil atheist philosophy professor.

In the film, Professor Radisson demands that all students in his class must sign a paper saying that there is no God in order to pass the class. Then, Josh Wheaton, a student, refuses to sign the paper. Professor Radisson gives Josh twenty minutes at the end of the first three lectures to argue for the existence of God. In the last session, Josh confronts Professor Radisson and asks him “Why do you hate God?” Radisson goes totally ballistic, admitting that he hates God because God let his mother die. The class goes over to Josh’s side. The movie ends with Radisson dying in a car crash and converting to Christianity with his dying breath.

It is an objectively horrible film in every way. Its portrayal of academia is totally wrong. The acting is terrible, but the writing is even worse. It was universally panned by critics, but it was hugely financially successful nonetheless because it appealed to many conservative Christians on an ideological basis. That summary of the film I just gave should hopefully give you an impression of what many American conservatives think about higher education.

ABOVE: Image of Kevin Sorbo as the evil atheist Professor Radisson in the 2014 Christian film God’s Not Dead, which was universally panned by critics, but was wildly financially successful nonetheless

Parodying the evil atheist professor memes

The memes about the evil atheist professor are so pervasive that they have even been parodied. The most famous parody is one that apparently originated on 4chan in around 2011 that reads as follows:

“A liberal Muslim homosexual ACLU lawyer professor and abortion doctor was teaching a class on Karl Marx, a known atheist.”

“’Before the class begins, you must get on your knees and worship Marx and accept that he was the most highly-evolved being the world has ever known, even greater than Jesus Christ!’”

“At this moment, a brave, patriotic, pro-life Navy SEAL champion who had served 1500 tours of duty and understood the necessity of war and fully supported all military decision made by the United States stood up and held up a rock.”

“’How old is this rock?’”

“The arrogant professor smirked quite Jewishly and smugly replied ‘4.6 billion years, you stupid Christian’”

“‘Wrong. It’s been 5,000 years since God created it. If it was 4.6 billion years old and evolution, as you say, is real… then it should be an animal now’”

“The professor was visibly shaken, and dropped his chalk and copy of Origin of the Species [sic]. He stormed out of the room crying those liberal crocodile tears. The same tears liberals cry for the ‘poor’ (who today live in such luxury that most own refrigerators) when they jealously try to claw justly earned wealth from the deserving job creators. There is no doubt that at this point our professor, DeShawn Washington, wished he had pulled himself up by his bootstraps and become more than a sophist liberal professor. He wished so much that he had a gun to shoot himself from embarrassment, but he himself had petitioned against them!”

“The students applauded and all registered Republican that day and accepted Jesus as their lord and savior. An eagle named ‘Small Government’ flew into the room and perched atop the American Flag and shed a tear on the chalk. The pledge of allegiance was read several times, and God himself showed up and enacted a flat tax rate across the country.”

“The professor lost his tenure and was fired the next day. He died of the gay plague AIDS and was tossed into the lake of fire for all eternity.”

“Semper Fi”

Many other parodies based on this template have also been created. My personal favorite is the “Christian philosopher” version that originated on r/RoughRomanMemes, but I won’t quote that version here.

ABOVE: Image of the original parody version of the atheist professor story

Debunking the atheist professor myth

Despite how obsessed right-wing conservatives seem to be with it, this whole notion that atheist professors are constantly trying to destroy young people’s faith is a pure urban legend. As far as I am aware, there has never been a single reliably documented case of a college professor ordering all his students to sign a paper saying they do not believe in God in order to pass his class. In fact, the idea that a professor would demand such a thing is frankly ridiculous for several reasons.

First of all, atheists generally don’t tend to care very much about what other people believe. Very few atheists are at all interested in converting other people to atheism. Furthermore, most people who become professors do it because they are genuinely obsessed with the subject they teach—not because they think it would be fun to use their position as a professor to impose atheism on their students.

In other words, a real atheist philosophy professor would most likely see trying to convert their students to atheism as a waste of valuable class time that could be better spent teaching their students about philosophy.

Secondly, if, for some reason, an atheist professor did order all their students to sign a statement that they do not believe in the existence of God, that would be in complete violation of the laws governing public state universities. Most notably, Title IX explicitly protects students from discrimination on the basis of religion. A professor forcing students to say that God is dead would definitely qualify as a form of religious discrimination. Any professor who ordered all their students to sign a statement saying that they did not believe in God would be immediately fired.

Third and finally, believe it or not, a large plurality of university professors are actually theists. Here’s excerpt from an article published in summer 2007 in Harvard Magazine discussing a study that was conducted on faculty beliefs on religion:

“Last spring, in a survey of 1,500 professors (from dozens of fields, working at community colleges, four-year colleges, and elite research universities, denominational and otherwise), Gross and a colleague, Solon Simmons of George Mason University, asked about their respondents’ political and social views. They found that more than half of the academics believe in God and less than a quarter are either atheist or agnostic.”

“The numbers surprised them, ‘particularly given that religion is not something that most professors talk about too much with their peers,’ says Gross. ‘I think it’s something that most academicians think of as a private matter, something that doesn’t have much of a place in departmental discussions, or in research.’ (Though comparatively low, the percentage of nonbelievers in academia is still much higher than the percentage of self-described nonbelievers found among the general public. That figure is only about 7 percent, according to the nationwide General Social Survey, issued by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago.)”

“Just as surprising to the researchers was the range of belief across institutions and fields of research. Although nearly 37 percent of professors at elite research schools like Harvard are atheist or agnostic, about 20 percent of their colleagues have ‘no doubt that God exists.’ At community colleges, in contrast, 15 percent of professors are atheist or agnostic, and 40 percent believe in God. These differences exist because of professors’ backgrounds and inclinations, says Gross. Professors who come from higher socioeconomic classes and are drawn to research over teaching or service—characteristics more common among academics at elite institutions—tend to be less religious.”

“A professor’s field of research or discipline is also predictive, he adds: psychologists and biologists are most likely to be nonbelievers (61 percent are atheist or agnostic), followed by mechanical engineers, economists, and political scientists. The most likely believers are professors of accounting (63 percent have no doubt that God exists), followed by professors of elementary education, finance, art, criminal justice, and nursing.”

The study described in this article is not an aberration. Surveys consistently find that a significant plurality of college and university professors are theists.

Even among scientists, surveys consistently find that belief in God is surprisingly high. A survey conducted by Pew Research Center in 2009 found that 33% of scientists said they believed in the existence of God. Eighteen percent of scientists said they didn’t believe in God, but they did believe in “a universal spirit or higher power.” Finally, only 41% of scientists said they did not believe in God or “a universal spirit or higher power.”

Surveys like the ones described above clearly demonstrate that the popular stereotype of professors and other intellectuals as militant atheists who hate Christians is not accurate at all.

ABOVE: Chart from Pew Research Center showing that, in 2009, roughly 33% of scientists said that they believed in the existence of God

My personal experience as a university student

I am currently a student at Indiana University Bloomington, which is one of those public state universities that conservative evangelicals seem to be so terrified of. Not once have I ever heard of a real professor at my university trying to force anyone to give up their religious beliefs. Indeed, I genuinely have no idea what religious beliefs most of the professors I have had have held, since almost none of them have talked about their own religious beliefs at all.

Here is an detailed overview of everything all my professors have said about religion over the course of my time in college that I can remember:

[Edit 4/25/2020: For the sake of anonymity, I have removed all professors’ names and replaced them with numbers.]

• Professor 1 was the instructor for a mathematics class I took the first semester of my freshman year. He never mentioned religion at all.

• Professor 2 was the instructor for both semesters of Ancient Greek that I took my freshman year. One day before class early on in the first semester, he made fun of Indiana laws prohibiting the sale of alcohol during certain hours on Sundays. On this same occasion, he mentioned that he was “raised in a fairly nondenominational Baptist home.” At another point later on in the semester, he joked that the passage in Greek that we were reading in our workbooks sounded “like a Baptist sermon.” He later mentioned during a casual conversation towards the beginning of the second semester that he currently attended the Unitarian Universalist Church with his wife and children.

• Professor 3 was the instructor for both semesters of Latin that I took my freshman year. She sometimes talked about ancient Roman religion, but she never mentioned contemporary religion at all.

• Professor 4 was the professor for a linguistics class I took the first semester of my freshman year. He mentioned on one occasion that he was Jewish. On a separate occasion, he mentioned singing Hanukkah songs with his mother. On another occasion, while we were learning about the relationship between psychology and linguistics, he gave a lecture in which he quoted the Book of Psalms 137:5–6, claiming (rather tendentiously in my opinion) that it was an accurate description of the effects of a stroke on the left side of the brain.

• Professor 5 was the professor for an anthropology class I took the first semester of my freshman year. During a lecture about Charles Darwin and the development of modern understanding of evolution, she described herself as an agnostic, but emphasized that many people of faith accept evolution and that accepting evolution does not require a person to be irreligious. She also mentioned that her younger brother is a minister.

• Professor 6 was the professor for a psychology class I took the second semester of my freshman year. She never mentioned religion at all.

• Professor 7 was the professor for an ancient Greek culture class I took the second semester of my freshman year. During the first lecture, he briefly mentioned that one of the issues dealt with in ancient Greek literary works that is still relevant today is “the role of the Divine in our lives.” He never mentioned contemporary religion after that. To this day, I still have no idea what his religious affiliation is.

• Professor 8 was the professor for a philosophy class I took the second semester of my freshman year. After explicitly being asked by a student why we had not talked more about souls in class, she replied, “Well, in order to really entertain the idea of a soul, you first have to accept substance dualism and there aren’t many substance dualists nowadays, so souls don’t usually get talked about much among contemporary philosophers.” This was the only time she really talked about religion that I can recall.

• Professor 9 was a professor for a history class I took the first semester of my sophomore year. During a conversation in class in which we were talking about how historians need to put aside their own opinions and be as objective as possible, he mentioned that, while he was working on his book The Unfinished Bombing: Oklahoma City in American Memory, which was about the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, he came across “some religious materials” that he personally found “really distasteful.” He said that there were a lot of people saying that the children who had survived the bombing had been spared by God for a special purpose. He responded to this by saying, “What about the children who didn’t survive? Is that supposed to mean that God didn’t care about them?” Nonetheless, he said that he put these objections aside, because he knew it was his job to faithfully record what had happened without passing judgement. I still don’t know what his own religious affiliation is.

• Professor 10 was a professor for a classical drama class I took the first semester of my sophomore year and an ancient Greek literature class I took the second semester of my sophomore year. At one point in my classical drama class, we were having a discussion that dealt with ancient Greek religion and he happened to mention that certain aspects of ancient Greek religion have survived in contemporary Greek Orthodoxy, noting that, when he went to Greece, he saw that, when you walk into a church, it is just filled with icons of saints and other holy figures and there are all these people venerating them—just like the ancient Greeks worshipped images of their gods. He also mentioned that he was told when he was studying archaeology, “If you want to find an ancient temple, the best place to look is underneath a church.” (Incidentally, these are both subjects that I wrote about in this article from April 2020.) He never said anything about his personal views on religion in class.

• Professor 11 was the instructor for both semesters of Latin that I took during my sophomore year. She sometimes talked about ancient Roman religion, but she never mentioned contemporary religion at all.

• Professor 12 was a professor for an Ancient Greek class I took the first semester of my sophomore year. He sometimes talked about ancient Greek religion, but he never mentioned contemporary religion at all. I have no idea what religious affiliations he may or may not have.

• Professor 13 was a professor for a class about classical art and archaeology that I took the first semester of my sophomore year. She talked fairly extensively about ancient Greek and Roman religions and how ancient peoples’ religious ideas were reflected in their art, but I don’t remember her ever talking about contemporary religion. She certainly did not talk about her own religious affiliations (or any lack thereof).

• Professor 14 was the professor for an American history class I took the first semester of my sophomore year. During a lecture towards the very beginning of the semester about western European culture prior to the discovery of the Americas, she described western Europe during the Early Modern Period as “Christian, sometimes ferociously so.” She went on to note that, in many places in western Europe during many time periods, if you were not a Christian, you had to ask permission from the government to live there.

• Professor 15 was a professor for a class about the history of the Roman Empire that I took the second semester of my sophomore year. He talked extensively about ancient Roman religions, including Judaism and Christianity in the Roman Empire. He sometimes made fairly neutral comparisons between ancient religions and present-day religions. He said that, in the earlier Roman Empire, Christians were persecuted, often quite brutally, but, in later times, they themselves became the persecutors. In a video lecture about early Christianity in the Roman Principate late in the semester he happened to mention offhand that he was a Christian himself.

• Professor 16 was the professor for a class about the Byzantine Empire I took the second semester of my sophomore year. He talked extensively about Christianity in the Byzantine Empire. He also talked about the Arab conquests of the large parts of the Byzantine Empire in the seventh century AD and interactions between the Byzantine Empire and various Islamic societies. He at one point assigned us to have an in-class debate about whether the use of icons is compatible with Christianity, using the arguments that were made in the Byzantine Empire during the period of iconoclasm. Students were assigned to argue for one side or the other. The purpose of the debate was to help students understand the arguments that were posed both in favor of and in opposition to the iconoclast movement during this period of Byzantine history.

• Professor 17 was the professor for a class about the history of ancient Sparta that I took the second semester of my sophomore year. He talked extensively about the role of religion in ancient Sparta. The only time he ever talked about contemporary religion that I can recall was when we were talking about the inaccuracies in the portrayal of ancient Sparta in the movie 300. He talked about how the film inaccurately portrays the Spartans and Leonidas in particular as being irreligious when, in fact, the ancient Spartans were known for their religious piety. He seemed rather annoyed by this decision by the filmmakers to portray the Spartans in this manner and he said, “I think this may be because in our own society, most people either aren’t religious at all or, if they are religious, they don’t believe in the Greek deities, so the filmmakers decided this would be a way to portray ancient Sparta that would give it a more contemporary resonance.”

• Professor 18 was a professor for an Ancient Greek class I took the second semester of my sophomore year. At one point towards the beginning of the semester he referenced the Biblical quotation “Consider the lilies of the field how they grow” as an example of grammatical prolepsis. He obviously got this example, though, from page 683 of Herbert Weir Smyth’s standard work on Ancient Greek grammar, A Greek Grammar for Colleges. He commented immediately after using this example, “Don’t ask me anything about the Bible because I don’t know anything about the Bible.” He never said whether he had any religious affiliation, but I would guess from his comment about not knowing much about the Bible that he probably isn’t a Christian.

Again, this is a complete list of all the public statements pertaining to religion that I can remember any of the professors that I have had so far having made in class. A couple of the professors on this list have made offhand remarks about their religious beliefs to me in private conversations, but I have not included those statements on this list because they were made in private to me personally and they were not made during class.

Not once have I ever had an instructor say that anyone had to sign a piece of paper saying that God did not exist in order to pass a class. Indeed, not once have I ever had an instructor say that God objectively does not exist, that anyone who believes in God is stupid, or anything even remotely along those lines.

In fact, of the instructors I have had so far, only four have explicitly stated their religious identities in class at all. Of those four, three of them were theists. Only one professor openly admitted to being irreligious in class, but the one who did admit to being irreligious explicitly made a point to tell us that we did not have to agree with her about religion.

Clearly, in my experience at least, professors at public state universities are not in any way compelling students to abandon their religious beliefs.