29 October

The Thirty Years' War took place in the 17th century. More than 8 million people died, and it's considered one of the most destructive conflicts in history. Triggered mostly by competing ideas of one true religion, it's what happened next that defined our world. Societies were sick of religious war, and swapped religious certainty, for scientific certainty. One absolute for another absolute, God for objective truth. We went on to kill more than 100 million people in secular, scientific wars in the 20th century alone. So just maybe, absolutes are our real problem. Fundamentalism, of all types. Religious and scientific, or whatever else.