Inoculation: That word does not mean what you think it means

And learning about scientific eugenics and/or race theory would precipitate what response exactly in teenage atheists?

Oh my.

I understand, but evidence of bad science hardly diminishes the utility of the scientific method in the same way that evidence of bad faith undermines belief. Anyway, I'm gonna leave it alone. I've been infesting again and should give it a rest. The inoculation discussion is an interesting one.

Most people who supported what you call scientific eugenics and race theory were good Christian gentlemen, some of them even your fellow religionists.

People who support such reprensible theories today, as far as I can tell are called neo-Nazis and are pretty much 100% Christians. What does this have to do with atheism, again? Oh, that's right, NOTHING. Please try again.

Let's not forget that scary "Science" did what science does -- self-corrects when new evidence is found -- and showed such theories wrong, wrong, wrong. Science worked.

Bill, whether it is official policy or just the reality on the ground, "opennness" is what we already have: anyone can read anything. Whether from your public library or Amazon or Googling terms of interest, there is unprecedented openness and access.

The inoculation discussion is not about restricting information or access -- that's a straw man argument. "Inoculation" is about encouraging mainstream members of the LDS Church (most of whom don't really have that much interest in the details of LDS history or doctrine) to do some reading and thinking. It complements openness.

Dave, openness is not what we already have. While it's certainly true that we live in an age of unprecedented access to information - including materials that might challenge the testimonies of the faithful - it is much more common for churchmembers to be counseled to stay away from what Elder Oaks called "other sources." BYU professors have been dismissed, not for writing diatribes against the Church, but for writing in the wrong journals. I can only speak for myself, but if I can remember any pattern detectable from Conference talks, firesides and other words from on high, it has been to follow the living prophets and ignore the rest.

Such counsel may be dead-on for those in need of more milk than meat, but the lack of leadership in this area is counterproductive. It's not hard to see why the leadership would want to avoid sticky topics with the propensity to take it off message, but when rank-and-file members are left to either avoid such topics or approach them at their own risk, people are often left ignorant (and unprepared) or devastated by what they find on their own.

My approach, when confronted with weird Mormon statements from the fossil record (including one of Brigham's many infamous rants) is to hunt down and read the original source - in its entirety. This is not innoculation. It's research. Inquiring minds want to know. Doing so does not un-weird the weird, but it does provide badly-needed context. Instead of depending upon the facile spins of a faithful handler, I'm able to discover the larger context for myself. If weird-comment-lookup were less a guilty pleasure and more a matter of Gospel study, it would suck the poison out of many uninvited discoveries while helping some of the faithful temper their credence for any stray comment uttered by a long-dead Mormon leader on an odd Tuesday when it was really the chili talking.