Atheists Teaching the Bible?

I got a good chuckle when I read this letter to the editor on the Lufkin Daily News. I couldn't find the original story it referenced.

"Teaching religion, a recipe for legal trouble" (LDN March 30, 2008) makes a good point. The state mandated teaching of the Bible in public schools will most certainly lead to many devastating lawsuits eventually costing local school districts millions. But be of good cheer Bible believers because there may yet be some light at the end of this narrow tunnel.

Will the Bible be taught as literature, history, sociology or religion? I say history, because the "Good Book" has a long and interesting secular history stretching back some 5,000 years. It's all very well researched and recorded, often in great detail. However, the perplexing question is, "Who will do the teaching?" No self-respecting Roman Catholic parents would allow a Protestant to teach the Bible nor would Baptist parents stand for a Catholic teacher. By the same token, orthodox Jewish parents would be well within their rights to reject a Christian teacher in favor of a rabbi. Needless to say, they would all disallow a Muslim. The obvious answer then is to require that all Bible teachers be atheists.

An atheist would be ideal for this job because in addition to being knowledgeable about the Bible and its history, as many of them are, atheists would bring no preconceived agenda of proselytizing to the class-room. They are the only ones who could be completely objective and honest in presenting the often controversial and contradictory course material.

The atheist teacher would have no reason to play favorites by being partial to any particular group of students and would therefore treat them all equally and fairly. In doing so those time and money consuming lawsuits, so correctly warned about in the above-mentioned editorial, would be avoided, and the students would come away with an unbiased view of the Bible for what it really is — an ancient cultural artifact originally produced by an obscure Middle Eastern tribe of ignorant, superstitious, desert-wandering nomads.