Schools and Sources

So earlier I was reading something on a forum discussing religion and why, when someone states that they are an atheist or an agnostic to any degree, people begin to quote Bible verses. I find the cause of this to be due to our educational processes, in which nothing holds any weight or value in a paper (or argument) without a source.

One problem with this process is this causes people to feel that if they come to their own conclusion on a topic (especially philosophy), but doesn't have any outside source to back the claim up, that it cannot be correct; you cannot come up with new, innovative ideas - at least, not any ideas that are seriously considered or might which make you a social pariah or deemed to be mildly (or moderately) psychotic, anti-religious, racist, unpatriotic, inhuman(e), et al.

Another problem is that I can come up with the same conclusion of a topic with similar data or arguments to some other person that I have not encountered (a source) without going to any sources at all (beyond the bare, raw data which does not include any kind of conclusion), yet my paper will not hold any value and will more than likely be declared as plagiarism, pirated, or whatever.

A larger problem, which somewhat ties in with religion to some, is that teachers and professors will accept a source, no matter how flawed or fictitious the source is. I imagine that if a paper asked to discuss the causes of poor mental health in women and you used the ancient Greeks as your source, with their thoughts of it being because the uterus wanders to different parts of the body, your paper would be correct and credible (even though they did, a few hundred years later do an autopsy on a psychotic woman to find her uterus in the correct place).

A rarer but no less valid problem is that maybe someone in the class (especially college) has already written a book on the subject, but no one knows that the pen name is that person, but if he writes a paper in their class on the subject that their book is about, they will be discredited and their paper won't hold value, no matter how acclaimed their book on the same subject is.

In short, educational processes are holding us back, in certain instances. How are we supposed to learn if we don't think? All school does is that makes us feel like we've learned or/and accomplished something when we get our grades. Waste.

Clearly, due to the lack of sources in this assertion, this argument is invalid, holds no credibility and is, quite plainly, flawed.