I was always a science and astronomy nerd, so read a lot of Clarke and other SF writers in the early 70s, my early teens.I absolutely allowed it to wreck if not totally destroy my faith in Christianity,since atheism is the biggest component of SciFi. Reading ‘The Star’, at age 12 made me feel so adult and erudite. I remember telling my mom about it. Thank God I fully rejected atheism before too long, but it still took awhile for me to embrace my Catholic upbringing, which I did enthusiastically almost overnight.
I believe SciFi messes up a lot of young minds. I still glance at it now and then because of the idea warp but so much is grotesque and pathological, even without atheism included.
Not just sci-fi, pretty much all fiction. It would be nice if every reader (and impressionable is not tied to youth) realized, it's a work of fiction, it ain't an alternative lifestyle, and is generally an long-form op-ed.