Happy Birthday Star Trek! 50 years ago today Star Trek debuted on NBC, changing the face of popular culture, and introducing a generation to the moral and intellectual virtues of humanism.

The brainchild of self-identified “agnostic atheist” Gene Roddenberry, Star Trek offered a bold new vision of a world where no one had gone before; a radical, progressive vision of the future, a future embracing all cultures and all people, a future eschewing religious superstition and dogma.

The surprisingly compelling and profound franchise began as the Vietnam War was just beginning to heat up, a time when the Cold War was at its zenith. At the time, Americans were afraid: afraid of Russians, afraid of communism, afraid of the racial, social and cultural upheaval confronting the nation.

Amidst all this turmoil came a television show that depicted a vision of our future that was optimistic: A future in which the conflict between capitalism and communism had been overcome, a future where earthbound forms of racial, ethnic and religious strife had disappeared, a socialist Utopia where merit determined one’s station in life.

By the 23rd century, the human race is done waging war upon itself. Instead, humanity is bound together in an interstellar federation, a united federation of planets engaged in missions of exploration and humanitarian relief.

Science and technology are embraced as natural and good, reason and scientific method are valued. Revelation, superstition, and the religious are missing altogether, or viewed as suspect, and revealed as fraudulent.

Indeed, a large part of what made Star Trek great was the distinct lack of religion. Roddenberry regarded himself as an “agnostic atheist,” and banned most religious references from the show. As such, the program was a subtle but powerful beacon for agnostics, atheists, and other freethinkers, a beacon of hope for those who rejected the petty religious superstitions enslaving so many otherwise good people.

The vision of the future articulated by Star Trek was a refreshing change from the apocalyptic future embraced by much of mainstream Christianity. In Star Trek there is a glorious, alternative weltanschauung, a humanist world view.

Star Trek was and continues to be an affirmation of self determination, an affirmation of the dignity and the worth of all intelligent life forms. More than a negation of the supernatural, Star Trek represented a process by which truth and morality could be sought and won, not by appeals to some imaginary divinity, but through human investigation and understanding.

Star Trek inspired a generation: The adventure continues, and the dream lives on.