An oldie but a goodie

It's a lazy Sunday afternoon and I am on the couch with the greatest movie of all time, "Lawrence of Arabia". I am catching up on e-mail and came across this. This joke has been making the rounds of e-mail servers in the US for some time now, but it's a good one.

(And as tempting as it might be to want to give credence to this story, remember that no self-respecting Marine would be caught dead at Berkeley.)

A United States Marine was attending some college courses at UC Berkeley between assignments. He had already completed missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. One of the courses had a liberal professor who was an avowed atheist and a member of the ACLU.

One day the professor shocked the class when he came in, looked to the ceiling and flatly stated, "God, if you are real, then I want you to knock me off this platform. I'll give you exactly 15 minutes." The lecture room fell silent. You could hear a pin drop.

Ten minutes went by and the professor proclaimed, "Here I am God. I'm still waiting."

It got down to the last couple of minutes when the Marine got out of his chair, went up to the professor, and cold-cocked him, knocking him off the platform. The professor was out cold. The Marine went back to his seat and sat there, silently. The other students were shocked and stunned and sat there looking on in silence.

The professor eventually came to, noticeably shaken, looked at the Marine and asked, "What the heck is the matter with you? Why did you do that?" The Marine calmly replied, "God was too busy today protecting America's soldiers who are protecting your right to say stupid stuff and act like an idiot. So, He sent me."