The chattering classes almost all believe the Enlightenment led to a permanently secular world, unencumbered by the dogmatic superstitions of religion. Tom Holland, writing in Unherd, argues that two recent developments – one in India, the other in Turkey – show that the ancient encounter between the secular and the sacred is far from settled.
At Least He Paid his Losing Bet
Paul Ehrlich, author of the spectacularly incorrect 1968 best-seller The Population Bomb, recently died at 93. Despite his longevity, Ronald Bailey points out in Reason, Ehrlich did not live to see even one of his numerous apocalyptic predictions come true. The world’s population certainly grew, but not merely larger, richer and fatter too. Most famously, Ehrlich once bet economist Julian Simon that the world was approaching economic collapse – but in 1990 had to mail Simon a cheque.
