I’m working on a two or three part series, but I haven’t been able to get the first part quite ready. So today, think about what it takes to inoculate against the truth.

As a kid I would come home from my Adventist School and watch “Bill Nye the Science Guy” and “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” I must have seen the episode this clip is from many times:

A good five years watching Bill Nye and Star Trek. Both presenting critical thinking and reasoning in entertaining ways, both could have been effective at opening my eyes. Instead I would ignore the parts that didn’t fit with what I believed. I was getting it every week at church, every day at school, and every night from my parents. Enough dogma can close the mind to the way things really are.

Probably the most effective tool in this is the claim that anything that doesn’t support the Bible is the work of the devil. Bill Nye taught good science, but when it went against what’s in the Bible it was because he was deceived and tricked by the devil. Star Trek was very entertaining, but when they said something like the above, it was because the writer was tricked by the devil. That one tool can be so effective at blocking out a message.

I was a smart kid. I excelled in math and science classes, but I was effectively inoculated against the truth.

(Video via Atheist Media)