Fail Quote of the Day: On the educational value of the Bible

From the terminally ludicrous Liberty Council, once again showing how the rely far more on demagogy and appeal to tradition than any form of a credible argument:

Today Liberty Counsel filed a lawsuit to overturn a recent ban on distributing Bibles on the public school campuses of Collier County, Florida. For years, the school board allowed World Changers to distribute free Bibles to interested students during off-school hours on Religious Freedom Day, but now the school officials claim that Bibles do not provide any educational benefit to the students and the distribution should stop. Many of our founding fathers were taught to read using the Bible. If it had no educational value, then many of them would have been illiterate.

Right, guys. If the founding fathers had never read the Bible, then they never would’ve learned to read. I mean, it’s not like they had anything like schools, is it? Or parents? And, of course, the only reading material available back in those days was, of course, the story of Gawd and Jeezus. And, after all, when you think of the Bible, aren’t “high literacy rates” and “sound educational merit” the first things that pop in your mind?

Now, for the record, I don’t know anything about the case they mention, such as who the World Changers (other than that they’re part of the Southern Baptist Convention) are and whether their activities, purportedly being the free distribution of Bibles on campus grounds, were indeed illegal. As far as I know (and do correct me if I err), it is indeed legal to pass out religious literature if you’re functioning as a private entity instead of a federally or publicly funded one. Maybe the World Changers are governmentally endorsed in some way, which would then indeed make their distribution of religious texts illegal; as I said, I just don’t know. I’ll wait for Ed Brayton’s take, as he’s sure to hear about this sooner or later and I glean most of my legal knowledge off of him, anyway. But the fact that Liberty uses that sort of a ridiculous argument – as if not reading the Bible led to illiteracy – is just further confirmation of how they truly are, indeed, terminally ludicrous, in addition to being legally illiterate (the kind that no Bible can help with – in fact, they tend to hinder one’s understanding of legality, if the religion-based actions of many Christians are anything to judge by).

(via @hemantmehta)