Paul Ehrlich died this month. He wrote a famous book, a book that has possibly done more harm than any other book in the last hundred years. It was called The Population Bomb.
Ehrlich was considered a “population scientist” but his actual field of expertise was in the study of butterflies.
His book claimed that there were too many people in the world, and that the world would run out of food. Unless drastic solutions were taken, such as forced population control and increased use of abortion, there would be mass starvation and endless death and misery. He even suggested creating a Department of Population and Environment that could, among other things, add sterilizing agents to water supplies.
He became rich and famous from his book. Maybe it was a case of being at the right place at the right time. It was 1968 after all, towards the end of a roller coaster decade. Maybe people were vulnerable to embracing a story of a gloomy secular apocalypse. It kind of reminds me of the climate change hysteria that is being peddled today.
The consequences of the book were tragic. One example is seen in a heartbreaking letter written in 2023 to The Wall Street Journal from a man named Kenneth Emde. He wrote: “I was a college student when I read Mr. Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb. I took it to heart and now have no grandchildren, but 50 years later, the population has increased to eight billion without dire consequences. I was gullible and stupid.” It makes one wonder how many others were tragically duped into not having children or grandchildren they would have otherwise had.
And of course there were the macro consequences. Ehrlich’s book was an influence on the one-child policy of China. For 35 years, from 1980-2015, the government of China forced couples to only have one child. That policy resulted in countless abortions, much loss of happiness, and a gender imbalance as boys were favored over girls. It was an evil policy. Plus, it had an unintended consequence: it went too far; China is now losing population, which points to a very gloomy demographic future. China abandoned the one-child policy, allowing two children, then three. But it was too late; the damage had been done.
It is considered likely that The Population Bomb influenced the social atmosphere that led to the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court ruling in America–which opened the floodgates to abortion. Roe v. Wade was in 1973, only five years after Ehrlich’s ideas were published.
Ehrlich ideas, and all the needless deaths they caused, are examples of a solution proposed by godless humanity. We think we can fix our problems without God. And when we do we cut ourselves off from God wisdom and inevitably bring disaster. God knows how we are made. He knows what the solutions are. When we leave Him out we will get the diagnosis wrong and the cure wrong–as Ehrlich did. It turns out that the world did not run out of food; advances in agriculture have solved the problem. In fact many places, especially western nations, the problem is that people are eating too much food.
And now, because not enough children are being born in some nations, the governments are offering substation sums to families to have more children.
If only we had listened to God, who told our first parents: “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it,” (Genesis 1:28). We cannot improve upon God’s wisdom.
Ehrlich was not the first to abandon God’s ways in the name of science. We saw it in the early 1900’s with the eugenics movement, where experts said that humanity should be improved by preventing people they deemed undesirable from reproducing. This was mainstream science back then.
Another example, going strong today, is the euthanasia movement. Physician assisted suicide. This practice used to be rightly shunned, but now it is increasingly embraced by western nations thinking that they know better than God who commanded: “You shall not murder,” (Exodus 20:13). Canada has embraced euthanasia with its MAID (Medical Aid in Dying) program. It was enacted in 2016 but has grown so fast that in 2024 it accounted for 5% of all deaths in that nation. Do you think anyone expected legalized suicide, after only eight years, to account for one out of every twenty deaths in Canada? But such is the nature of evil. It doesn’t advertise how far it wants to take you.
Eugenics, abortion, euthanasia…it’s like a culture of death has taken hold. It represents the wisdom of the godless world. What will be next?
We should say no to these things. It is the responsibility of God’s people to not be fooled. We should not be impressed with people just because they have advanced degrees and titles.
And, yes, we might have to pay a price in standing against a popular idea. To go with God will often put you out of the mainstream. You might be called a fanatic, or unscientific, or that you are turning back the clock. But it’s a price we should be willing to pay.
In the area of religion, a cult is a bad thing. In the area of science, a cult of the expert is also a bad thing. How many times are we being sold on an idea because “experts say” or “leading scientists say”. We should know who the experts and scientists are, where they are coming from, and what are their motives in promoting a suspicious idea. It their ideas are against God–the one who made us, who is smarter and better than us–we need to say no to it. What will be the next installment of the death culture to be pushed on us? When it comes we can be sure in it will be promoted as: “this is reasonable, this is for the best.”
God put protections on life. Human beings do not have the right to “cull the herd” of humanity. We are not given that power. The power to give life and take it is God’s. We are not to usurp Him here, or in any area.
Ehrlich was one of those rare people who managed to be wrong about everything. It would have been better if he was merely spouting opinions that no one listened to. But unfortunately many people listened to him.