Spread Great Ideas
November 2026 | Newsletter
Hi,
Most of us think our beliefs are just facts. This month’s essay looks at what happens when a belief stops being questioned: across five democracies, energy policy has started to work like a religion, complete with sins, penance, and heretics. The point isn’t who’s right about climate. It’s whether we can still tell the difference between what we know and what we believe.
The Creeds We Don't Notice
"People almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof but on the basis of what they find attractive."
- Blaise Pascal
"From the saintly and single-minded idealist to the fanatic is often but a step."
- Friedrich Hayek
"Almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so."
Robert Heinlein
Featured Essay: Urban Atheists: The Most Religious People You Know
Nietzsche didn't celebrate the death of God; he worried about what would rush into the vacancy. This essay follows one answer onto the electricity grid, from Groningen's earthquake payouts that no longer ask whether an earthquake caused the damage, to Germany's dynamited cooling towers and Australia's ban on the fuel it mines for everyone else. Then it holds all of it up against Norway, which sat on a similar endowment and made very different choices.
Also Worth Your Time
If that one landed, these two come at it from different angles.
Michael Crichton: Environmentalism Is a Religion
The 2003 speech that mapped the creed's Eden, fall, and judgment day.
Scientism vs. Science: When Science Becomes Religion
Tthe line between a method for testing claims and a belief system that stops testing them.
Closing Quote
"Reality is that which doesn't go away when you stop believing in it."
- Philip K. Dick