There is a great and terrible danger in being a strict immovable literalist and in insisting every word in the Bible as written is the inerrant absolute word of God.
"No mere physical discovery can affect the Catholic culture as a whole, whether in its clerical or in its anti-clerical branches. The ruin of the Darwinian nonsense during the last twenty years has been largely effected by anti-clerical biologists: the greatest achievements in research—Pasteur’s among others—have been the work of practising Catholics.
But with the Protestant culture of the North it was far otherwise. That had been based upon a book, and the literal interpretation of that book. It had, of course, its profound spiritual origin, an excessive and enthusiastic passion for lonely communion with God. But its rock of authority was the Book."
One additional bit: "Characteristically enough, the guesswork is turned into dogma, and faith reposes on concrete images. But the dogmas change every few years, and the images as well. All within the murk is still changing, and will continue to change, until the dust of the explosion has come slowly to earth and has stratified. When that happens there will be a new heresy. I wonder what it will be like?"
Perhaps "especially" a Protestant (and even more so Baptistic) problem; the individual Catholic must still make a decision to accept the Church authority.
The Shroud of Turin corroborates the scriptural account of the crucifixion and death of Christ quite nicely. It might even verify His resurrection, since the body in the shroud did not putrefy. That part we will have to take on faith based on the testimony of the apostles. BTW: the Carbon 14 dating of the shroud as medieval has been thoroughly discredited. Other dating methods support its ancient provenance.
I believe all of this is a bit more spiritual than what you are positing here.
If we take mr erhman at his word, the man is insane.
Now, erhman IS insane, but more importantly: *bart ehrman is evil*.
I don’t think a nonexistent “contradiction” about a “staff” did anything. I think bart ehrman, like a lot of protestant pastors, did some kind of sexual sin based on his “influence” over his congregation.
Now the actual absurdity ehrman faced in this FAR more realistic scenario is this:
0) inspired by protestants literally worshiping their “pastors” like “gods,” he did some depraved, sinful things.
1) his shame did not go away after his internalized his protestant “automatic forgiveness” dogma failed to do anything.
2) bart, maddened by his shame, retreated into temptation (wealth, pleasure, power, honor).
3) bart began to see God And His Church as a roadblock to him abusing others.
4) bart figured that “The Book” (somehow) “gave” God His Divinity.
5) bart not only tries to trash “The Book,” but he writes his own to prompt his apotheosis by default.
6) ???
7) bart becomes “like God.”
bart ehrman’s entire time as the freemasonic rodeo clown We know him as is #6 there, and every day #7 does not come for him, so his raging and absurdity grow.
the “staff” thing is a common trait for liars: grip onto the first thing you see, then beat your victims over the head with it until they submit to you. mr ehrman ADORES contradictions, as all liberal slaves do, he just wants to hurt Us and so swings the first object he gets his hands on wildly.
This reminds me of two stories:
A) I was selling a guitar, and a lowballer came to me with a bad trade: enter an hour of hurried explanation of how my guitar is “worth nothing” because of the brand of switch inside of it, to saying his lesser valued item is worth my loss in cash because of “mojo.” I told him his bluster isn’t worth the cash. Turns out he just didn’t have the money to make up the difference in value and was too ashamed to admit it.
B) Venerable Fulton Sheen talks about how a stewardess went from giddy about being in RCIA to blaspheming The Church while screaming and waking at him in his seat. stewardess goes away and comes to her senses in the break room on the plane, came back and the process repeated where giddiness was replaced with blasphemous screaming. Venerable Fulton Sheen noticed that her mania happened both times when he described Confession to her, so he he asked her “Tell me, did you happen to have an abortion?” Instantly the stewardess stopped screaming her hate and fell to the floor of the plane weeping like a child.
bart’s a bit far gone for that kind of intervention; even without the money, I’d imagine the sexual attention from bloated, aging, post-abortive white women is his real drug (richard dawkins style).
If only someone slapped him years ago we could have avoided decades of this mess.
The fact that you can't prove or disprove the Resurrection is the point. If anyone could prove it - really prove it, beyond the shadow of a doubt - we'd have no choice but to believe it. If God wanted to force belief, there are easier ways for Him to do it.
Forgive me for being plain-spoken but the Ehrman-school and the Douthat-school are equally obnoxious to me. What a dreadful way of discussing a classical text albeit it technically corrupt and even awfully so. This type of talk is what I once referred to in a post on this very Substack with a phrase from Nadezhda Mandelstam's Hope Abandoned: "... as soon as thought dries up, it is replaced by words."
I get the feeling that both believer and unbeliever (a different species from the atheist) have the Book installed in the same place where others, faithful, sceptic, agnostic and so forth, store their brains.
The spook called Artificial Intelligence started with the methodical thrashing of words abandoned by the Spririt without the speakers so much as noticing. This is the curse on the West.
For me, there's one argument for the Resurrection which was made by the eminent British theologian N.T. Wright, In his book "The Resurrection of the Son of God". this book ia a tour-de-force across the Mediterranean intellectual landscape, describing the various views and beliefs regarding a life after death - or a resurrection. He then points out that the very first people who saw the resurrected Jesus were ... women. Then as now, in that society the witness of women were useless, to be disregarded. Thus, why would the disciples 'make up' their story by using the testament of useless women instead of men or indeed themselves - if their report had not been true?
I'll leave it there ... but for interested readers, let me highly recommend the books by N.T.Wright who also writes as Tom Wright.
Not quite. This is actually St Thomas The Apostle’s Argument:
“God would never show himself to a woman first.”
This is because everything has to be EXACTLY as is Promised. Rightly Ordered Only. Scripture Is A Catholic Legal Document so the process has to be Legally Correct for the Contract to be Valid.
Now, St Thomas IS Right:
God Showed Himself to the soldier(s) guarding the tomb first, who then ran off to commit suicide in shame and horror.
St Mary Magdalene saw him second. People didn’t know that until after, therefore St Thomas worried everything was for naught. Since The Church did not consider roman soldiers significant, St Mary Magdalene is called “the first” on a technicality; some people who have no idea what’s going on (like protestants) take the technicality deadly serious, and therefore invent “contradictions” that aren’t actually there.
St Thomas’ “doubt” is a Deep Knowledge of what Scripture And Covenants Fundamentally Are, not some naysaying. If things were not Legally Correct, the Contract would be void and the whole enterprise would be invalid.
Bibles were never meant to be read by laymen for a reason. Were they, they would have been 100 times longer and “idiot proof” enough that not even ehrman could conjure up “fault.”
Returning to the faith ~18 yrs ago, I decided to learn more about it. One of my first purchases was a series of Teaching Company lectures on Jesus and the NT by Bart Ehrman. His disdain for Christianity was quite evident.
The Resurrection is the keystone event, or miracle if you wish, under girding Christianity. It is celebrated (acknowledged, honored, worshiped) on Easter.
The last two POTUS's have blasphemed Easter in the extreme. JFK is the only President to attend Mass on Easter, so expectations may be historically low, but Biden and Trump went far in the other direction, debasing Easter with vile slurs and acts.
If you don't believe, that's your problem. You have free will, for good or ill. But trashing the world's largest religion on its holiest day is beyond the pale. So is faking Christianity to hide your mortal sins. Very unfortunately, there's a lot of that going on these days.
"That Paul was killed meant, as all students of logic can deduce, that he was not in fact unstoppable. That execution, you see. What a terrible way to ruin a good story! "
I think the author of Luke would be familiar with the idea of death not being the necessary end.
I'm not saying Paul was resurrected bodily (yet), rather that an early Christianity would not necessarily be so ashamed of the death of its leaders.
Walter Lippman way back in 1929, in his book "A Preface to Morals", was able to make the crucial distinction (and he wasn´t even in his forties) between THE MIRACLE and the SENSE of something miraculous. That´s why I have no patience with old white men who discover atheism, and keep discovering it. But I liked Christopher Hitchens because he could tell a joke and enjoyed scotch.
As a (former) Baptist Sunday School teacher, I was astonished at the lack of knowledge by youth and adults about the Bible, Old and New. I would teach basic facts about what they say - to incredulous response. These people had been taught chaff for a lifetime. No surprise their faith was shallow.
For an introduction to the New Testament, I recommend the books by Bart D. Ehrman. Such as “Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth.”
So Bart published the book you recommended in 2014. A Brave search about his atheism says “The Decisive Factor: The Problem of Suffering: After living for about 15 years as a liberal Christian, it was the problem of suffering in the world that ultimately led him to agnosticism and atheism around the year 2000.” He makes an historical argument of Jesus existence 14 years after he renounced his faith and declares there is no God. Jesus, just another dude, trying to con the local rubes. Buy my book, it’s historical.
I too, listened to one of Bart’s Great Courses and couldn’t detail my reaction but just felt he had some disdain for the subject he spent his whole life researching. I greatly preferred Jesus and the Gospels Great Course by Luke Timothy Johnson. So, no I won’t be buying Bart’s book despite the recommendation- I suspect he cherry picked the information he chose to record in his historical narrative.
1/ I suggest that you read one of his books before commenting on his beliefs. Or listen to that course again, but more closely. You totally misrepresent his beliefs about Jesus.
2/ You listened to one of his courses but still needed a search engine’s summary to describe his beliefs? That’s …odd.
3/ You seriously consider a search engine’s summary useful for something so complex? Did you bow to it before reading the output?
I have his book Misquoting Jesus and have read his website. The search engine was used to summarize his timeline in the changing of his beliefs relative to the publication of the recommended book. Bart’s faith journey may be complex or not, that’s not the person we will be studying 2000 years from now. “Bowing “ to a search engine- now that’s a weird comment. But since you are a scholar that refuses to read the results of search engines, please go to the original archives and inform us exactly how the search engine summary was wrong in either the timing or his decisive factor. Maybe even write an essay about The Historical Bart.
Christianity has had a good run. But below-replacement fertility will doom any culture by the only criteria Mother Nature (or, as Jefferson said, Nature’s god) uses: survival. If it can’t replace itself, into the trash it goes.
See the results of this survey, looking at beliefs of young women in England. Angry, hating men and themselves, alienated from society, directionless, don’t want children or anything else. Very very Leftist. This is a doom loop.
My guess - a wild guess - is that Islam is our future. A small number of aggressive people can change a society of sheep. It’s already happening in Europe. These young women will become the vanguard. They will don the veil and become docile to men who treat them badly. Now for the worse news: I have a record of accurate guessing.
Not just England- see all European countries, USA, Canada, Australia and non-Western countries: Japan, Korea. Paul Ehrlich and the globalist, Marxist, feminists ideology created this population doom loop. Mohammad invented the militant all or nothing system that will take all the spoils of the cultures that gave up.
Total nonsense. The fertility crash has affected almost everybody but sub-Sahara Africa and some religious populations (eg, Orthodox Jews in Israel). Irrespective of ideology, politics, economic system, and (mostly) religion.
Some forms of Islam have evolved a patriarchal social system that might retain above replacement fertility. Islam takes many forms around the world, inherently no more “all or nothing” than many of the other religions that have come and gone over history. Including variants of Christianity.
FYI - nations with largest Islamic populations are Indonesia, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, and Nigerian. They have a wide range of cultures.
World Bank summaries by region, income, org membership. Broadly speaking by country income:
Low 4.5
Lower middle 2.6
Low and middle 2.3
Middle 2.1
Upper middle 1.5 (64 countries in 2025)
High 1.4. (87 countries in 2025)
You are correct that low fertility countries cover all cultures, religions and ideologies. The original commenter only mentioned England, I broadened the list to Anglo-sphere, European and a couple developed Asian countries. Not an inclusive analysis. UAE very wealthy Islamic is 1.2, same as Italy and Japan. The countries I mentioned, mostly secular and Christian, (S Korea 52% secular, the religious are mostly Christian 31%, Buddhist 16%) are not too poor to have children. You say an association with ideology in the countries I mention is total nonsense and only credit sub-Saharan countries with sustainable fertility. That’s not true either. Indonesia is 2.13, Pakistan 3.5, plus many others not in sub -Saharan Africa.
What do you think is driving most of the wealthy countries to population decline? I won’t dismiss your argument as total nonsense because you are thoughtful whereas I am not.
"No mere physical discovery can affect the Catholic culture as a whole, whether in its clerical or in its anti-clerical branches. The ruin of the Darwinian nonsense during the last twenty years has been largely effected by anti-clerical biologists: the greatest achievements in research—Pasteur’s among others—have been the work of practising Catholics.
But with the Protestant culture of the North it was far otherwise. That had been based upon a book, and the literal interpretation of that book. It had, of course, its profound spiritual origin, an excessive and enthusiastic passion for lonely communion with God. But its rock of authority was the Book."
H. Belloc. Lots more here: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/hilaire-belloc/the-cruise-of-the-nona/text/single-page
One additional bit: "Characteristically enough, the guesswork is turned into dogma, and faith reposes on concrete images. But the dogmas change every few years, and the images as well. All within the murk is still changing, and will continue to change, until the dust of the explosion has come slowly to earth and has stratified. When that happens there will be a new heresy. I wonder what it will be like?"
Most don't know the debates in the early Church over monism versus dualism - which was resolved by adopting the trinitarian view!
And one final quote, perfect for the P value, Matt. "Speculation is the concealed material of their Mumbo-Jumbo; assertion its ritual."
This is only a debate for Protestants of course, since they rejected Church authority and needed a substitute.
Perhaps "especially" a Protestant (and even more so Baptistic) problem; the individual Catholic must still make a decision to accept the Church authority.
The Shroud of Turin corroborates the scriptural account of the crucifixion and death of Christ quite nicely. It might even verify His resurrection, since the body in the shroud did not putrefy. That part we will have to take on faith based on the testimony of the apostles. BTW: the Carbon 14 dating of the shroud as medieval has been thoroughly discredited. Other dating methods support its ancient provenance.
I believe all of this is a bit more spiritual than what you are positing here.
If we take mr erhman at his word, the man is insane.
Now, erhman IS insane, but more importantly: *bart ehrman is evil*.
I don’t think a nonexistent “contradiction” about a “staff” did anything. I think bart ehrman, like a lot of protestant pastors, did some kind of sexual sin based on his “influence” over his congregation.
Now the actual absurdity ehrman faced in this FAR more realistic scenario is this:
0) inspired by protestants literally worshiping their “pastors” like “gods,” he did some depraved, sinful things.
1) his shame did not go away after his internalized his protestant “automatic forgiveness” dogma failed to do anything.
2) bart, maddened by his shame, retreated into temptation (wealth, pleasure, power, honor).
3) bart began to see God And His Church as a roadblock to him abusing others.
4) bart figured that “The Book” (somehow) “gave” God His Divinity.
5) bart not only tries to trash “The Book,” but he writes his own to prompt his apotheosis by default.
6) ???
7) bart becomes “like God.”
bart ehrman’s entire time as the freemasonic rodeo clown We know him as is #6 there, and every day #7 does not come for him, so his raging and absurdity grow.
the “staff” thing is a common trait for liars: grip onto the first thing you see, then beat your victims over the head with it until they submit to you. mr ehrman ADORES contradictions, as all liberal slaves do, he just wants to hurt Us and so swings the first object he gets his hands on wildly.
This reminds me of two stories:
A) I was selling a guitar, and a lowballer came to me with a bad trade: enter an hour of hurried explanation of how my guitar is “worth nothing” because of the brand of switch inside of it, to saying his lesser valued item is worth my loss in cash because of “mojo.” I told him his bluster isn’t worth the cash. Turns out he just didn’t have the money to make up the difference in value and was too ashamed to admit it.
B) Venerable Fulton Sheen talks about how a stewardess went from giddy about being in RCIA to blaspheming The Church while screaming and waking at him in his seat. stewardess goes away and comes to her senses in the break room on the plane, came back and the process repeated where giddiness was replaced with blasphemous screaming. Venerable Fulton Sheen noticed that her mania happened both times when he described Confession to her, so he he asked her “Tell me, did you happen to have an abortion?” Instantly the stewardess stopped screaming her hate and fell to the floor of the plane weeping like a child.
bart’s a bit far gone for that kind of intervention; even without the money, I’d imagine the sexual attention from bloated, aging, post-abortive white women is his real drug (richard dawkins style).
If only someone slapped him years ago we could have avoided decades of this mess.
The fact that you can't prove or disprove the Resurrection is the point. If anyone could prove it - really prove it, beyond the shadow of a doubt - we'd have no choice but to believe it. If God wanted to force belief, there are easier ways for Him to do it.
Belief is not the maintenance of an opinion.
Forgive me for being plain-spoken but the Ehrman-school and the Douthat-school are equally obnoxious to me. What a dreadful way of discussing a classical text albeit it technically corrupt and even awfully so. This type of talk is what I once referred to in a post on this very Substack with a phrase from Nadezhda Mandelstam's Hope Abandoned: "... as soon as thought dries up, it is replaced by words."
I get the feeling that both believer and unbeliever (a different species from the atheist) have the Book installed in the same place where others, faithful, sceptic, agnostic and so forth, store their brains.
The spook called Artificial Intelligence started with the methodical thrashing of words abandoned by the Spririt without the speakers so much as noticing. This is the curse on the West.
"the methodical thrashing of words abandoned by the Spririt without the speakers so much as noticing"
Brilliant phrase! Nuance: see Orwell's brilliant essay Politics and the English Language https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/politics-and-the-english-language/
(though I think the "AI" BS is both more insidious and much simpler than you suggest)
Thank you for mentioning Orwell's essay, I'll look it up tomorrow (it's getting late here).
The curse I have in mind grows from a simple root and has insidious consequences. We may be in agreement more than we think.
That was truly riveting to read!
For me, there's one argument for the Resurrection which was made by the eminent British theologian N.T. Wright, In his book "The Resurrection of the Son of God". this book ia a tour-de-force across the Mediterranean intellectual landscape, describing the various views and beliefs regarding a life after death - or a resurrection. He then points out that the very first people who saw the resurrected Jesus were ... women. Then as now, in that society the witness of women were useless, to be disregarded. Thus, why would the disciples 'make up' their story by using the testament of useless women instead of men or indeed themselves - if their report had not been true?
I'll leave it there ... but for interested readers, let me highly recommend the books by N.T.Wright who also writes as Tom Wright.
Not quite. This is actually St Thomas The Apostle’s Argument:
“God would never show himself to a woman first.”
This is because everything has to be EXACTLY as is Promised. Rightly Ordered Only. Scripture Is A Catholic Legal Document so the process has to be Legally Correct for the Contract to be Valid.
Now, St Thomas IS Right:
God Showed Himself to the soldier(s) guarding the tomb first, who then ran off to commit suicide in shame and horror.
St Mary Magdalene saw him second. People didn’t know that until after, therefore St Thomas worried everything was for naught. Since The Church did not consider roman soldiers significant, St Mary Magdalene is called “the first” on a technicality; some people who have no idea what’s going on (like protestants) take the technicality deadly serious, and therefore invent “contradictions” that aren’t actually there.
St Thomas’ “doubt” is a Deep Knowledge of what Scripture And Covenants Fundamentally Are, not some naysaying. If things were not Legally Correct, the Contract would be void and the whole enterprise would be invalid.
Bibles were never meant to be read by laymen for a reason. Were they, they would have been 100 times longer and “idiot proof” enough that not even ehrman could conjure up “fault.”
As software engineers always learn the hard way, no idiot-proof system is proof against sufficiently determined idiots... ;)
For some strange reason I'm reminded of the new Book invention as explained in the Medieval Helpdesk video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUQRbqc2qtY
We put our fingers in the wound of our own lies, or temptations to lie, and declare lying is the only true thing.
Very interesting.
Returning to the faith ~18 yrs ago, I decided to learn more about it. One of my first purchases was a series of Teaching Company lectures on Jesus and the NT by Bart Ehrman. His disdain for Christianity was quite evident.
The Resurrection is the keystone event, or miracle if you wish, under girding Christianity. It is celebrated (acknowledged, honored, worshiped) on Easter.
The last two POTUS's have blasphemed Easter in the extreme. JFK is the only President to attend Mass on Easter, so expectations may be historically low, but Biden and Trump went far in the other direction, debasing Easter with vile slurs and acts.
If you don't believe, that's your problem. You have free will, for good or ill. But trashing the world's largest religion on its holiest day is beyond the pale. So is faking Christianity to hide your mortal sins. Very unfortunately, there's a lot of that going on these days.
40 days huh?
is that 3,456,000 seconds?
is that 40 plus or minus 1/2 day?
or is it just a figure of speech, meaning a long time?
----------
personally, i think it means just a long time.
A most enlightening, edifying, and entertaining essay. Thank you, good Sir. Happy Easter. Pax Christi
"That Paul was killed meant, as all students of logic can deduce, that he was not in fact unstoppable. That execution, you see. What a terrible way to ruin a good story! "
I think the author of Luke would be familiar with the idea of death not being the necessary end.
I'm not saying Paul was resurrected bodily (yet), rather that an early Christianity would not necessarily be so ashamed of the death of its leaders.
Walter Lippman way back in 1929, in his book "A Preface to Morals", was able to make the crucial distinction (and he wasn´t even in his forties) between THE MIRACLE and the SENSE of something miraculous. That´s why I have no patience with old white men who discover atheism, and keep discovering it. But I liked Christopher Hitchens because he could tell a joke and enjoyed scotch.
As a (former) Baptist Sunday School teacher, I was astonished at the lack of knowledge by youth and adults about the Bible, Old and New. I would teach basic facts about what they say - to incredulous response. These people had been taught chaff for a lifetime. No surprise their faith was shallow.
For an introduction to the New Testament, I recommend the books by Bart D. Ehrman. Such as “Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth.”
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0062204602/
So Bart published the book you recommended in 2014. A Brave search about his atheism says “The Decisive Factor: The Problem of Suffering: After living for about 15 years as a liberal Christian, it was the problem of suffering in the world that ultimately led him to agnosticism and atheism around the year 2000.” He makes an historical argument of Jesus existence 14 years after he renounced his faith and declares there is no God. Jesus, just another dude, trying to con the local rubes. Buy my book, it’s historical.
I too, listened to one of Bart’s Great Courses and couldn’t detail my reaction but just felt he had some disdain for the subject he spent his whole life researching. I greatly preferred Jesus and the Gospels Great Course by Luke Timothy Johnson. So, no I won’t be buying Bart’s book despite the recommendation- I suspect he cherry picked the information he chose to record in his historical narrative.
That’s quite the weird comment.
1/ I suggest that you read one of his books before commenting on his beliefs. Or listen to that course again, but more closely. You totally misrepresent his beliefs about Jesus.
2/ You listened to one of his courses but still needed a search engine’s summary to describe his beliefs? That’s …odd.
3/ You seriously consider a search engine’s summary useful for something so complex? Did you bow to it before reading the output?
I have his book Misquoting Jesus and have read his website. The search engine was used to summarize his timeline in the changing of his beliefs relative to the publication of the recommended book. Bart’s faith journey may be complex or not, that’s not the person we will be studying 2000 years from now. “Bowing “ to a search engine- now that’s a weird comment. But since you are a scholar that refuses to read the results of search engines, please go to the original archives and inform us exactly how the search engine summary was wrong in either the timing or his decisive factor. Maybe even write an essay about The Historical Bart.
Christianity has had a good run. But below-replacement fertility will doom any culture by the only criteria Mother Nature (or, as Jefferson said, Nature’s god) uses: survival. If it can’t replace itself, into the trash it goes.
See the results of this survey, looking at beliefs of young women in England. Angry, hating men and themselves, alienated from society, directionless, don’t want children or anything else. Very very Leftist. This is a doom loop.
My guess - a wild guess - is that Islam is our future. A small number of aggressive people can change a society of sheep. It’s already happening in Europe. These young women will become the vanguard. They will don the veil and become docile to men who treat them badly. Now for the worse news: I have a record of accurate guessing.
Just call me Mr. Cassandra.
Not just England- see all European countries, USA, Canada, Australia and non-Western countries: Japan, Korea. Paul Ehrlich and the globalist, Marxist, feminists ideology created this population doom loop. Mohammad invented the militant all or nothing system that will take all the spoils of the cultures that gave up.
Total nonsense. The fertility crash has affected almost everybody but sub-Sahara Africa and some religious populations (eg, Orthodox Jews in Israel). Irrespective of ideology, politics, economic system, and (mostly) religion.
Some forms of Islam have evolved a patriarchal social system that might retain above replacement fertility. Islam takes many forms around the world, inherently no more “all or nothing” than many of the other religions that have come and gone over history. Including variants of Christianity.
FYI - nations with largest Islamic populations are Indonesia, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, and Nigerian. They have a wide range of cultures.
Replacement rate 2.1
World Bank summaries by region, income, org membership. Broadly speaking by country income:
Low 4.5
Lower middle 2.6
Low and middle 2.3
Middle 2.1
Upper middle 1.5 (64 countries in 2025)
High 1.4. (87 countries in 2025)
You are correct that low fertility countries cover all cultures, religions and ideologies. The original commenter only mentioned England, I broadened the list to Anglo-sphere, European and a couple developed Asian countries. Not an inclusive analysis. UAE very wealthy Islamic is 1.2, same as Italy and Japan. The countries I mentioned, mostly secular and Christian, (S Korea 52% secular, the religious are mostly Christian 31%, Buddhist 16%) are not too poor to have children. You say an association with ideology in the countries I mention is total nonsense and only credit sub-Saharan countries with sustainable fertility. That’s not true either. Indonesia is 2.13, Pakistan 3.5, plus many others not in sub -Saharan Africa.
What do you think is driving most of the wealthy countries to population decline? I won’t dismiss your argument as total nonsense because you are thoughtful whereas I am not.