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It's Tuesday, March 17, 2026. I'm Albert Mohler, and this is the Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview. The biggest news we can talk about today is the fact that Paul Ehrlich has died at the age of 93. He died on the 13th of March. And now we're just getting media coverage of the fact that Paul Ehrlich, longtime professor, decades long professor at Stanford University, has died. Now, why is that so important? Well, when you look at the history of the 20th century, one of the things that will become glaringly apparent is that there were certain persons with outsized influence, and in the case of Paul Ehrlich, a very malign, a very dangerous outsized influence. He was a professor, as I said, for decades at Stanford University, and he was the author of the 1968 book the Population Bomb, in which he made the argument that there were too many human beings on the planet and that the birth rate had to be brought down fast and even by political coercion. And he had already warned in 1968, it is too late. In that book, he began with this. The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s, hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon. Now, at this late date, nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate. You'll notice, he said, it's already too late. But even as he says that, he wrote the book because he wanted something to happen. And he became the most famous worldwide advocate for population control. And population control, of course, means having fewer babies. And population control eventually is going to require government coercion. And you'll notice that Paul Ehrlich was pretty bold about saying, yeah, that's going to be inevitable. It's already too late to avoid hundreds of millions of death by starvation, but at the very least, we can address the problem. And he called upon governments to seize control and require couples. Isn't it interesting there was a reference there to couples to have fewer or no babies. Now, just to state the obvious, this is the direct contradiction to and repudiation of the biblical worldview. So as Christians, you already hear the problem. The Lord's command in Eden was to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. That was the assignment given to the first human couple, Adam and Eve. And this was in order to increase and multiply the number of image bearers on the earth. God's glory was going to be in every single new life. And every single new life was to be welcomed. One of the strongest messages in the Bible, it's clear in the Old Testament, it's consistent in Scripture, is that human life, every individual human life, is the gift of the Creator. And every single human being is made in God's image. And you are to welcome every single baby into the world, regardless of circumstances. But when you think about this time I said the book came out, the population bomb, in 1968, you'll notice it's tied to so many other developments in the culture. You have the sexual revolution taking place. And you know what? You can't have a sexual revolution in which you try to overthrow the entire Christian moral code on sexuality that is most importantly, sex reserved to marriage as the union of a man and a woman. And inside, and only inside of that relationship is sex to be legitimate. You can't have a sexual revolution without destabilizing marriage. You can't have a sexual revolution without birth control. And so one of the dark parts of the story is just how hard so many people were working, especially after World War II, to try to bring about workable birth control or contraception. Now, there's a distinction between those two. But the most important thing is to recognize that the effort to try to avoid having babies without avoiding sexual relations, that was a huge issue. And it was coming from the political left in the United States, no doubt about it. And I will be glad to trace that for you and have elsewhere. But it also comes with, just think about 1968, the book the Population Bomb, in which Paul Ehrlich is offering this dire warning. We have to cut the birth rate immediately. This is also just five years before the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade, striking down all state laws against abortion, legalizing abortion coast to coast. The revolutionary spirit of these years is just unbelievable. The progressive left, the secular left, massively advanced during these years. And population control was a part of what they claimed as moral mandate. Okay. The argument that was made by Paul Ehrlich was coming as a scientific argument. In other words, another very interesting development in the period after World War II. And you have the rise of the authority of scientists. And so in the sexual revolution, one of the most important of these was Alfred Kinsey with his so called Kinsey reports. And Alfred Kinsey was not a medical doctor. He was an entomologist. His specialty was the gall wasp. That's just in case you don't know an insect. And yet he catapulted into popular consciousness in the United States as the great scientific prophet of a sexual revolution. And he was pictured In a white coat, treated with scientific authority. Again, he was a specialist in wasps, but he became one of the major agents for the sexual revolution. Similarly, Paul Ehrlich wasn't a medical doctor. He wasn't trained, say, in matters of geography and population. He did his doctorate. He wrote his dissertation in entomology, also about butterflies. And so you have a gall wasp specialist who is the prophet of the sexual revolution, and a butterfly specialist who. Who is the prophet of massive human extinction and the population bomb. Okay, so why was this so plausible? Well, it was plausible in part because there had been a rapid increase in the world's population, given a couple of different developments. And again, we see both of these as very, very good. Okay. But. All right. One of the biggest advances was cutting the infant mortality rate. And cutting the infant mortality rate meant that if you look at certain times in human history, only about half of children survived into the later teens. Okay. So with the advent of all kinds of things that came in the modern age, including not only some drugs, but also just the notion of hygiene, in some ways, germ theory, that led to the fact that you have a cut in the death rate, in the infant mortality rate, or the children's mortality rate. So that means more children are growing into adulthood. You also had the industrial revolution that led so many people into the cities, and so all of a sudden, you have these cities teeming with people. And that presented all kinds of new sociological issues and pathologies. It led to the rise of modern policing. You really didn't need that kind of policing when everybody's living out on the farm or in a village. But you create a modern city, like, say, London in the 19th century, guess what? You got to have a police force. The other big issue here was the distribution of food. And of course, throughout human history, one of the darkest developments has always been famine, a shortage of food. And over the course of human history, there is no doubt that one of the saddest things have been not only plague and infectious disease and all kinds of different illnesses, but also you have a shortage of food, starvation, and indeed, famine. And sometimes, of course, they come together, but by the time you get to the 19th century, both of these are in retreat, at least worldwide. You have modern farm, which is also coming into effect. And of course, the big explosion wouldn't come until the second half of the 20th century with all kinds of advances, but nonetheless, you're looking at a booming population. The other big issue here, and we just need to name this, was discrimination. It was. There are too many of those People. Some time ago, I just finished a book manuscript on this very issue. And in it I cite the fact that in the Population Bomb, Paul Ehrlich began his first chapter by recalling a visit to Delhi in India. And this is what he wrote. The streets seemed alive with people. People eating, people washing, people sleeping, people visiting, arguing and screaming, people thrusting their hands through the taxi window, begging, people defecating and urinating, people clinging to buses, people hurting animals. People, people, people, people. End quote. Okay, you'll notice that there's a not too subtle discrimination that is baked into that cake. And by the way, people have since pointed out that the population density of Paris may have been greater than the population density of Delhi at that time. And at least one critic of that movement said the issue is not too many people in the views of some of these academics, it's too many Asians for Christians. We have to understand that all of this is just a reversal of the creation order. It's a repudiation of. Of creation order. It is also a subversion of human dignity because you are declaring it to be a social good, that certain persons are never born. So you get your sexual revolution, you get the redefinition of marriage, you get the personal autonomy, and you have this ultimate utopia in which there are fewer and fewer people. And you make the argument in economic terms. And of course, the astounding thing is that so quickly after Paul Ehrlich made this argument, all the evidence began lining up on the other side. And I mean, even just the demographic and, say, food supply information, all that data. And the reason is because there was an enormous green revolution at about the same time. And this was made possible by any number of factors. But it included, most importantly, some figures, especially in the worlds of agriculture, who came up with different ways of creating strains of grains, for example, that were resistant to some of the diseases that had wiped out entire crops. And you had mass farming that enabled the growing of a quantity of food and a predictable basis that had never been faced by human beings before. And here's good news, and it's something that Christians often don't pause to think about, and that is that right now, there is no worldwide shortage net of food. There is no net shortage of food. If there is hunger, if there's any kind of famine anywhere in the world. Now, it is not because the world itself is not producing enough food. It is because for some reason, there is a maldistribution. And that for some reason, most regrettably, often comes down to war. But here's another aspect of the Paul Ehrlich phenomenon, the population explosion, as it was later called the population bomb in his original book, in 1968, Hollywood picked up on it. The American elite picked up on it. It became a cultural preoccupation. Now, get this. When you talk about Paul Ehrlich, you're talking about an academic. But this was in a day in which you had programs such as the Tonight show with Johnny Carson that routinely brought someone like Paul Ehrlich on, and in particular, Paul Ehrlich himself. At one point, he became more or less the sole guest in at least one of the programs. According to the records at NBC, Paul Ehrlich was a guest on the Tonight Show 20 times. That's 20 times. And you're talking about an artifact of mainstream American culture. Americans began staying up later watching these variety shows for entertainment at night. And what's interesting is that they most often featured more Hollywood celebrities and things like that. To have an academic on, a butterfly specialist on from Stanford University to talk about the human birth rate, that was something unprecedented. Clearly, Johnny Carson, the entertainer had something of a real interest in this issue, otherwise he wouldn't have invited Paul Ehrlich on again and again and again. But here's the thing. Large segments of the American population bought into the idea that we were having too many babies worldwide, and that meant too many babies here. Now, I want you to recognize that that is exactly in the face of what's claimed to be climate change and an ecological crisis. That is the same thing we're facing right now. And there are so many people who are openly saying they're not going to have children, and it's. Because who would bring children into this world? Well, that was exactly what people were told to say back in the 1960s. You bring someone into the world, some other child is going to starve because your child is born, you have more than one child, you have more than two children, then you are a menace to society. That is a direct violation of the scriptural logic. And by the way, it turns out to be a direct violation of the agricultural reality as well. Let's just face the fact that worldwide, right now, there are virtually no societies facing a genuine threat of too many babies. There may be too many babies at one point in one place, and that requires some concentrated attention. But worldwide, there is no, no society that is threatened by having too many babies. And there are many and eventually all societies that are going to be threatened by a falling birth rate. Too few babies. And there are countries right now where the birth rate is so low that, for instance, as we discussed on the briefing, you have some Asian countries talking about developing robots to take care of people in nursing homes because there will not be enough young people to take those jobs. That is is the inheritance of this false ideology. But speaking of Paul Ehrlich, who again died last Friday, I think it's really interesting to note that reality did not bring about any major correction in his theories. And so even as it became true that his dark predictions were untrue. So again, let me just read that again, the words from 1968. In the 1970s, hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon. Now, again, hundreds of millions of people will starve to death. Let me just state the obvious. That did not happen. Okay? So you would think that an author, a scientist at Stanford University, who had predicted that nothing could prevent a starvation of hundreds of millions of people in coming years, and in fact, he said by the 1970s, you would think that if you had said that and staked your academic reputation on that as a scientist, and it didn't happen, you might have to recalibrate your theory. That's not at all what happened. And it's because, and Christians need to recognize this, this was a basic antipathy to humanity, a basic hatred of humanity. And it was an ideology. And Paul Ehrlich and others with him were not about to abandon that ideology in the face of facts. Now, I also mentioned something else, and that is we need to notice this. Paul Ehrlich, he was not reluctant to say the cutting of the birth rate may require government coercion. He said this, quote, we must have population control at home, hopefully through a system of incentives and penalties, but by compulsion, if voluntary methods fail. Did you notice that you have a professor at Stanford University saying that if voluntary efforts fail, then governments should use compulsion to require couples to have fewer children to cut the birth rate. And you know who is listening. And this is one of the things that Americans are going to have to take responsibility for. It was the Communist Party in China that brought about the horrifying one child only program that led to infanticide, and it led to abortion and forced sterilization, where you had the Chinese Communist Party dictating that couples could have only one child, child. That was one of the most horrifying, ideologically deadly ideas and policies of the 20th century. And China is bearing right now the results of that in a falling birth rate that threatens the future existence of Chinese civilization. But I want you to note something, and that is that there were international organizations and American foundations and others who were arguing that China needed to take such a stance because you have people in the west who are afraid there are just going to be too many Chinese people. Are you catching a theme here? Paul Ehrlich really showed his hand. Too many Indian people and the others were saying, too many Chinese people. And now you have some people who are saying, you know, you have too many babies being born in places like Africa. Let me just tell you, there is a basic racism that is fundamental to the population control movement and it has been that way from the beginning. Before leaving this, I want to look at what you see in the contemporary press, what you're seeing media reports right now about Paul Ehrlich's death, because this reveals a very great deal. So let me read to you the opening of an article that appeared in the New York Times. Paul R. Ehrlich, an eminent ecologist and population scientist whose best selling book, the Population Bomb, was celebrated as a prescient warning of a coming age of food shortages and famine, but later criticized by conservatives and academic rivals for what they called his sky is falling rhetoric, died on Friday in Palo Alto, California. He was 93. Okay, now wait just a minute. So we're told that he was celebrated at the time for writing what was called a prescient warning of a coming age of food shortages and famine. Let me just point out again, it didn't happen. It didn't happen. But the New York Times says he was criticized by conservatives and academic rivals. How about the fact that he was contradicted by history, reality? Paul Ehrlich, by the way, was one of the co founders of what was known as the Zero Population Growth Model movement. It's now been renamed Population Connection. That tells you a lot, too. They have to repackage it now because zero population growth is hardly, hardly a theme that's going to gain much traction in a world in which the problem is too few babies, not too many. But you'll notice they just kept up the ideology. They kept up the political agenda as well. And one of the most interesting and disappointing things is how many people in the political and entertainment, the academic elites played along with him right along to the end. They never came back and said, wow, that was massively wrong. I was massively wrong. This has led to all kinds of horrifying consequences. They never acknowledged this really at all. Paul Ehrlich came back and said it was true that some of his predictions turned out to be too dire. But he kept on warning about an imminent ecological Catastrophe. Now, by the way, there are legitimate issues to raise in terms of our responsibility and stewardship for the environment. But when you really reduce his position, it's not only based upon lies. It's also based upon a basic hatred of human reproduction, that is to say, of babies. And that's just a horrifying thing. It's the direct, intentional reversal of the creation mandate. I've given this more attention than usual simply because when you think of a worldview collision, it's hard to come up with one more graphic and important and deadly in the 20th century than what we've just seen. And just recall, we're now reaping a lot of what was sown with this ideology. You have many people today, even in the United States, who say the problem is we're having too many babies. No, the problem is we're having too few. There aren't enough babies being born. The birth rate is not high enough. We're going to have a death rate well above the birth rate. And that's already true, by the way, in some societies. It's very difficult, by the way, evidently, to reverse that. And once people get used to not having babies, it turns out you have a pattern ongoingly of not having babies. And those babies grow up also to have fewer babies. It is civilizational collapse. And for Christians, it's a reminder, by the way, that we don't have to wait for historical developments such as what's taken place over the course of the last several decades to tell us how we are to see these things. We understand these things based upon biblical revelation and biblical authority. The Creator has not left us without the word as to how we are to understand these things. And it just begins with be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. And by definition, that can't be the problem. Meanwhile, on the cultural front, just a few things that I'll just put together because they kind of fit together. We now know the New York Times is reporting that Dr. Oz, that's Dr. Mehmet Oz, who is the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, actually called together representatives of the professional societies in medicine to talk about the issues related to young people, that is to say, children and teenagers when it comes to trans care, transgender care. And so you have had some announcements that have come out of late. For example, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons came out with a statement that they would no longer approve as routine treatment, so called gender affirmation or gender transition surgeries and treatments, including hormones, when it comes to children and Teenagers saying that there wasn't enough evidence to demonstrate that these were justified. Now, I'll say that that language is too calm, but nonetheless, it is a significant reversal of what had been really a pro LGBTQ argument, which was gaining velocity even as it moved forward. The T has become a major issue simply because people are looking at the obvious and recognizing the danger. And of course, right now, the danger issue is concentrated on children and teenagers, but the implication goes far beyond that. The reason right now, minors, those who are under age 18. The reason that's so important right now is because the law has a clear path for protective legislation and policy when it comes to young people. It does not extend some of the social same protections to those who are recognized legally and morally as adults. And it's going to be very interesting to see if other medical professional organizations get into step on this, because right now, their vulnerability is massive. And we've seen that already in the United Kingdom, where the medical societies are going full bore with the transgender agenda, until all of a sudden, they started seeing the devastation that was wrought. And of course, this comes in medical ease, as in there's insufficient data to justify these procedures on a widespread basis. Let me tell you how to understand that in one very clear way. And that because we're afraid we're going to get sued. Speaking of things that just illuminate, in California, there is legislation under consideration that would make it illegal to tell a biological male who identifies as female that he can't have a medical test, which only makes sense on a female. And so now you're talking about the transgender identity being taken to the extent that insurance companies and others are going to have to pay for, and. And I guess play along as if medical procedures are being done that actually are anatomically impossible. This is really like Alice in Wonderland kind of irrationality. But there's big money behind it. There's all kinds of political energy behind it as well, and it's now coming as legislation. Meanwhile, also in California, the Ninth Circuit, generally a very liberal federal appeals court, the Ninth Circuit, handed down a ruling basically saying that Korean spas. Okay, you got to follow this for just a minute. Korean spas could not segregate male and female to the extent that a biological and anatomical male claiming to be female could be kept out of the shared nude spaces in the Korean spa. And the majority in this ruling from the 9th Circuit said that it was unjustified discrimination that there was no First Amendment protection for these Korean spas. The reason that the Korean word is important here is because of the culture in those spas, which includes nakedness as a part of the spa experience in some kind of communal setting. And so here you have again, you have the ninth Circuit, or at least a panel of the ninth Circuit Court of Appeal, saying that it is not okay. There's no constitutional protection for a Korean spa to protect women in women's only spaces by keeping out people who are very clearly and obviously visibly anatomically male. One of the dissenting judges, by the way, issued an extremely colorful dissent that I will not cite in terms of reading from it. I'll just tell you that dissent has also made news. It's also interesting that little things come along, such as an article in the New York Times about conservative activists upset about some of the animal experiments that have been undertaken by the Centers for Disease Control. One of them had to do with Grant's quote, for hormone studies on mice that were described as bizarre transgender animal experiments, end quote. Your tax money at work with research on transgenderism in mice. You know, what could go wrong? Finally, speaking of what could go wrong, I mentioned the Korean spas and the issue of nudity just along with the theme, don't worry, it's safe. The USA Today recently had a major article that was entitled, quote, rules to follow on a Nude Cruise. Okay, so that is the paper that builds itself as America's newspaper. You know, just McPaper it was called when it first came out. And here you have the front page of the Money section. Again, the headline, rules to Follow on a Nude Cruise. I'm going to spare you the rules. It's the very existence of the article that tells you a great deal about what's going on in this world. Even at USA Today, I don't think you would have seen a headline like that until very recent Times. The New York Times real estate section also had an article, the headline, where nudism once thrived will it again. This has to do with a nudist colony in Florida, Pasco County, Florida. And there are some who are trying to bring it back, but it turns out that that just might be pretty difficult to do, given, by the way, a lot of the ways that these things are now legally defined. The ideology of nudism, we're told in the Times piece, quote, debuted in America at a Manhattan gym in 1931 when German immigrants started a naked work workout club, part of a European wellness movement linking nudity to health. In post war America, nudism became a family affair at rustic camps. But the insular retreats lost their appeal during the sexual revolution in the 1960s, when many rejected discreet destinations in favor of more public places like nude beaches. One historian said, quote, many of the older camps, the ones that are out of the way, they're dying off very rapidly. End quote. I don't know, it just seems, as we come to a conclusion, that it is at least interesting that you have major American newspapers who are treating these issues as headline news stories. I'll just end with this and say now, you know. Thanks for listening to the briefing. For more information, go to my website@albertmohler.com you can follow me on X or Twitter by going to x.comalbertmoeller for information on the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbts.edu. for information on Boyce College, just go to boycecollege. Com. I'll meet you again tomorrow for the briefing.