Ken Ham’s Cult of Intellectual Suicide

Recently, I watched a documentary about the Order of the Solar Temple - a 1990s apocalyptic cult whose members committed mass suicide (and in some cases were murdered) in the belief they would ascend to the star Sirius. I also watched the documentary on the Jonestown Peoples Temple cult, which was even more horrific. As shocking and tragic as these cults were, what struck me most wasn't the cult’s bizarre mythology or their elaborate rituals, but how potentially smart, professional, seemingly rational people were drawn into such an obviously destructive delusion. Over the years, I’ve spent many a moment pondering how people fall so deeply for something so plainly false and destructive.

What I also observe when I see cults like Answers in Genesis (AiG) - to which I dip in and take a look from time to time – is how similar it is to the most destructive cults like the ones I just mentioned. At first glance, AiG might seem to many like just another fundamentalist Christian ministry with an odd obsession with a young earth, literal Genesis, and dinosaurs on the Ark. But dig deeper, and you’ll find an echo chamber with extreme dogmatism, pseudoscience dressed up as fact, manipulation of fear and identity, and a lot of money being made at the top. Ken Ham is raking it in while his pliable acolytes divest their credibility and do his bidding for him.

Now, I’m not suggesting that there’s going to be a mass suicide in the AiG cult (except, alas, a mass suicide of the mind, which has been happening since its inception) - but in terms of mind control and willingness to give up critical thinking and regard for the truth, Ken Ham and his AiG cult is eerily similar in its psychological structure and top-down manipulation techniques. Ken Ham is a spiritual bully masquerading as a Christian saviour – a low-rent fear-mongerer and control freak, where if you doubt one element of the cult’s agenda, you're accused of rejecting God altogether. It's a squalid form of scriptural ideological totalism – which is, alas, a hallmark of nearly all cults.

I’ve observed the posts and conversations on the AiG forum many times – and have repeatedly observed how the leaders employ several key rhetorical and psychological tactics to draw in and retain believers. First there are the false binaries - you’re either with God (meaning AiG’s interpretation of scripture) or you’re siding with “man’s word.” This foolish, overly-simplistic black-and-white logic is designed to prevent critical engagement. There’s no room for nuance, no space for integrating science with faith, and then with the first sign of dissent you’re consigned to Hell and Hamnation, where Ken and his team write you off as a lost cause.

Alongside this is a tactical trick that I guess you could call presuppositional inversion - start with the Bible, and only then look at science, where any evidence that doesn’t match their interpretation must be flawed. While the AiG cult is blind to it, this is little more than a circular reasoning trap where the conclusion is assumed at the outset, leaving the members no way to think anything else. Then we have the brand, merchandise and marketing, in the shape of AiG’s museums and literature - full of misleading models, charts, educational distortions, and elaborate explanations that are carefully constructed to look and sound scientific - but crumble under the first wave of scrutiny. It’s indoctrination only thinly disguised as inquiry, which is why I find it baffling that so many people in the cult fall for it.

The Ham-meister General frequently appeals to fear and identity - if your kids don’t believe Genesis, watch out because they’ll become atheists and abandon morality – which primes them towards a deeply emotional attachment to a worldview that seems to offer safety and moral clarity. To reinforce this, followers are subtly (or overtly) encouraged to distrust what they call secular scientists, Christian evolutionists, and even Christian denominations that interpret Genesis differently. Dissent becomes synonymous with disobedience to God, which is a form of top-down duress that is the hallmark of most cults.

Ken Ham has positioned himself as a spiritual gatekeeper while enjoying the perks of CEO-level income from peddling lies and falsehoods. Followers are encouraged to donate, buy materials, and volunteer - all while being told they are “standing for truth in a fallen world.” This is classic cult economics; build an empire on fear, identity, and certainty, and your followers will fund it for you.

Watching the Sirius cult and the Jim Jones cult documentaries, I found myself thinking that this is AiG in a nutshell, but just more extreme and tragic. It’s the same old system every time – one that isolates minds, exploits vulnerability, and profits richly off fear and control. And while AiG is not a cult of physical suicide, it’s a cult of intellectual suicide, like countless other cults that have come and gone before it. 

 

The False Affirmation Trap

 

Famously, when a woman in the UK asks, "Do I look good in this dress?", it’s deemed to be an emotionally charged question with implied expectations that hinder the honesty of the answer. It’s similar to when a male asks his chum “Do you think my new girlfriend is good looking?”, and if he thinks ‘no’, he’s in trouble. 😀

Emotionally charged questions with implied expectations are difficult for society because they promote dishonesty or false reassurance, which means it becomes harder to know what people honestly think and believe.

This is another reason why the widespread assault on free speech is so damaging to society. When people are reluctant to say what they honestly think or believe, for fear of reprisal or backlash, they start to say what they think society expects them to say, and the truth of what people really think gets lost in a morass of lies, dishonest consensus, and social performance.

Assaults on free speech become assaults on truthseeking, honesty and integrity.

Monday Odds & Ends: Facebook Memories

 

I've noticed something odd about Facebook memories – you know, those memories of past posts that pop up every day when you log in. The memories it offers me are but a fraction of potential memories it could offer me. I’m sure you are constantly aghast at how frequently scintillating my daily posts are, but there was at least as much, probably more, scintillation between, say, 2009-2016, and Facebook almost never offers any of that content in the memories. The memories it offers are primarily posts between 2022-2024, and the occasional select one from the distant past. There would be lots that would be worth re-sharing from the aforementioned older period, that friends I’ve acquired in the past 10 years probably haven’t seen, but Facebook hardly ever offers any of them on the daily memories.

I wonder if it’s to do with contemporary algorithms being very selective about what it offers for sharing. Because currently it’s barely scratching the surface.

 

On 'Divine Hiddenness'

 

The concept of ‘Divine hiddenness’ is regularly cited as one of the strongest arguments against God’s existence. It’s a term coined by the philosopher J.L. Schellenberg, in which he asked why God is not more evident or obvious, especially to people who are open to belief. If a perfectly loving God exists, then God would want to be in a relationship with all people, he posits. There are people who he claims are "nonresistant nonbelievers" - those who are open to believing in God and would enter a relationship if they could, but don’t believe due to lack of evidence or divine presence. Schellenberg concluded that a perfectly loving God would not allow nonresistant non-belief, and therefore He probably doesn’t exist.

One of the subsidiary themes in my book The Genius of the Invisible God is along almost opposite lines – that a key part of the genius of God’s cosmic narrative is that He remained so invisible or hidden in so much of creation, and that it is for our benefit that He does. While the book doesn’t directly address the ‘Divine hiddenness’ contention (I hadn't heard of it when I wrote the book in 2012) – it indirectly turns the objection on its head by showing how we should be thankful for any hiddenness God chose to exercise on creation. Or to put it this way, people talk about God not making His existence more obvious, but I don’t see it that way. Through Christ, God voluntarily enters the world to suffer and die for the sake of everyone, and then leaves His Holy Spirit so that those who believe in Jesus as Lord can have an intimate relationship with Him.

Perhaps those who don’t think God has made Himself more obvious are not thinking the right way about what He HAS done, and continues to do. Through the Incarnation, God has made an impression on the world that will last for as long as human civilisation. Think about what it’s like when a charity worker in the UK leaves their comfortable, affluent lifestyle and goes across the world to a region in a country that is mired in poverty and hardship. Through their support, grace, kindness and generosity, and through the relationships they build, they leave a legacy that far outlives their stay in the region. In fact, in some profound sense, the deepest connections last for as long as time is recorded.

I think that’s what God is like in relation to how the power of the cross endures, and how Christ's Incarnation, scripture and the Holy Spirit provide and equip us with everything we need to know who God is, to have a relationship with Him, and to counter the issue of Divine hiddenness.

Bad Soiled In Good

 

It’s good to remember that false beliefs tend to be nested in many more true beliefs and good intentions – a bit like how a rotten seed is buried in rich, fertile soil under a blooming garden - which I think persuades people who hold them that their false belief isn’t wrong, or it enables them to suppress their doubts about the false belief.

For example, the false belief of young earth creationism is nested in a sincere and noble desire to honour sacred texts, to protect the world from people trying to pull Christians away from the faith, and the need to respect Christian tradition. Climate Alarmism is nested in the virtue of responsible stewardship, real concerns about environmental degradation, animal welfare, good-faith concern for future generations, distrust of institutional power and irresponsibility, and a sense of ethical responsibility to act. And socialism is nested in the desire for a less unequal world, concern for the underdog, compassion for the disadvantaged, that sort of thing. Even the extreme nationalist views  are nested in some very human and often well-meaning concerns, like the desire for belonging, the need for cultural continuity, the fear of losing identity in a rapidly globalising world, alertness to the problems of uncontrolled immigration, nostalgia for historical communities, all encased in a protective impulse to preserve language, tradition, a sense of rootedness, and so forth.

Rotten seeds buried in the otherwise rich, fertile gardens of the mind are easily disregarded by those in whom they are planted, especially while looking at the iridescent bloom of the sun-baked lilies and the climbing jasmine.

But that’s not quite the full picture either, because there are also the perverse incentives, self-serving instincts, socio-cultural pressures, and the tangle of faulty reasoning that guide the hand which plants the rotten seeds - sometimes knowingly, sometimes not. At the risk of a further stretch of the analogy, these seeds are often disguised as compost, offered by well-meaning neighbours, or sold by bad actor merchants with something to gain at the buyers’ expense.

Which is why the work of tending to our own intellectual garden is an essential, continual work in progress – aided by the trowel of open, rational enquiry, the pollination of dialogue, the water of truthseeking, and the sunlight of humility.

The Trouble With The BBC's Literary Adaptations

My wife and I are in a season of watching BBC TV adaptations of great literary works. The works of Eliot, Tolstoy, Austen, Hardy and Dickens have graced our TV screen in recent weeks, and they make for pleasant viewing. And as a funny aside, when we moved in, we named every room in our house after great authors or scientists, with 4 of the above 5 each proudly bearing a sign - all except poor Tolstoy, who has yet to find a room. But while watching the TV adaptation of Middlemarch, I sensed more and more of an issue I have with these dramatisations – they are so far removed from the written content of the book that their viewing is at best a pale imitation of the terrific works of literature they claim to represent.

When watching Middlemarch, I noticed that the adaptation rarely uses George Eliot’s actual words - and for a novel so dependent on its narrator's wise, ironic and deeply humane voice, that absence leaves a noticeable gap. I’d put Middlemarch up there with the greatest ever literary works – and reading Middlemarch is a profound experience in large part because of the way George Eliot guides us through the inner lives of her characters as the narrator. Her narration offers one of the broadest insights of the multiple characters you will ever read, often pausing the story to reflect on human nature, morality, and the quiet dignity of ordinary lives. Without this voice, the drama lacks much of the book’s power, because it is devoid of the means to convey Eliot’s brilliant, intricate and meditative prose. 

Much of the book’s brilliance lies in inviting the reader to bathe in superb long sentences, philosophical digressions, and subtle ironies - none of which fit easily into the rhythms of spoken dialogue. I suspect the BBC thought that adapting Middlemarch faithfully would mean laying out the story in psychologically sophisticated voiceover narration and long cerebral speeches that might alienate modern viewers – but if they were prepared to sacrifice that, then it’s no longer authentic Middlemarch, it’s just a fairly decent TV period drama.

I felt the same about the adaptations of Jane Austen’s works. Her novels are also rich with irony, wit, and precise social observation, much of which lies not in what her characters say, but in what the narrator says about them. Austen’s tone is also difficult to capture without quoting her directly – and the adaptations we watched (Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion) kind of…kind of… preserve the broad strokes of her stories and the charm of her characters, and with great casts of actors too, but they lose the razor-sharp narrative voice that gives Austen’s work its enduring brilliance.

I find there’s a slightly different problem with the Dickens TV adaptations. Dickens was a master of theatrical dialogue and memorable caricature, and much of his writing does lend itself to performance. But I found his adaptations often underplayed his darker satire, his biting political commentary, the fierce sense of justice conveyed with such energy and invention, and the rhythm and richness of his prose.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m sympathetic that it’s difficult to adapt novels like the above without flattening some of their depth, but I lament the fact that these adaptations feel like a sketch of something much fuller – so brutally stripped of the artistry, rhythm, and soul that made the original profound. It must be a deliberate decision on the part of the creators – but it’s a bit like listening to a symphony through our 20 year old Honda’s car speakers, where the melody remains, but the nuance, texture, and emotional resonance are muffled and diminished. 

The Primary Reason People Don't Believe

 

We can dance around the numerous reasons people give for claiming not to believe in God, and rejecting Christianity for reasons x, y, and z. But I have a more compelling claim - one that 25+ years of discussing faith with sceptics has taught me: it's that the primary reason people reject Christianity is much simpler at its base. It's because they don't want to believe.

When you observe people, you can begin to identify algorithmic heuristics, which are a deep kind of pattern recognition around belief systems - especially the hidden motivations or psychological undercurrents beneath surface-level reasons. Once you've established this framework for a particular trait or pattern, you can apply it more broadly across a spectrum of claims, especially in empirically intractable subjects like religion, politics, economics and social commentary.

For Christians, I'd say the most useful heuristic that reveals a core resistance is this. I believe that if we could drill down right into the heart of why unbelievers are not Christian - the real reasons apart from what people claim on the surface - we would find that they are driven by what I think is the fundamental resistance to Christianity; that those who do not believe do not want to believe, but either can't admit this is the case, or can't recognise why it's the case.

When you hear the reasons why people say they don’t believe, they are mostly disguised intellectual or emotional coverings for a deeper unwillingness to believe. To truly engage with their resistance, you must discern why they don’t want to believe, and what lies beneath that reluctance.

I believe that is one of the primary insights that can equip both the Christian who wants to be a faithful and insightful witness, and the unbeliever who is honest enough to ask themselves why they currently might not want to believe. This is because one of the most profound insights of self-reflection in this matter involves attempting to recognise in ourselves; firstly, why we don't want to believe; secondly, how we determine what we want; and thirdly, what that lack of want is really disguising, or what concern or anxiety is it safeguarding, or what inconvenient need for change it is prolonging, or what short-term need it is fulfilling, or what particular superficial freedom it is shielding, and so forth. Get to the root of why an individual doesn't want to believe, and the rest is extraneous to the argument.

Abundance Begins With Gratitude For What We Have

 

I’m writing a book on gratitude, because gratitude is one of the superpowers of psychological and emotional well-being. As we grow wiser, we become more aware of one of life’s profound truths: the more we cherish what we have, the more satisfying, fulfilling, and abundant our life becomes. Conversely, the more we dwell on our struggles - on what we lack or have yet to achieve - the more life seems to withhold from us. When our attention is fixed on what’s missing, we compromise the ability to fully appreciate and enjoy our blessings.

But it gets even better, because the more we value what we already have, the more life seems to give. Gratitude doesn’t just deepen our appreciation for what’s already ours - the important people in our lives, our achievements, talents, possessions, memories, etc - it opens the door to obtaining more of what’s absent, and increases the chances of us receiving it.

Carrier Off Course With Cause

 

Standard variants of the Cosmological Argument are built on this syllogism:

P1: Everything that begins to exist has a cause other than itself.
P2: The universe began to exist.
C: Therefore, the universe has a cause other than itself.

Christians who understand the essential two category distinctions, God (uncaused, necessary Being) and creation (caused, contingent things - basically, everything that isn’t God), accept the Cosmological Argument is correct in some form, but I think it’s better to have ‘creation’ in the premises not ‘universe’, in case God’s creative dispensations extend beyond this universe. So, an improvement is:

P1: Everything that begins to exist has a cause other than itself.
P2: Creation began to exist.
C: Therefore, creation has a cause other than itself.

A Being powerful enough to bring all of creation into existence is the necessary, uncaused, eternal cause traditionally understood as God, who has made Himself personally knowable in Christ.

Recently, atheist Richard Carrier tried to offer a fundamental issue with the Cosmological Argument, where he says:

“Everything that begins to exist has a cause other than itself” is literally logically impossible. Why? Because “Everything” includes all laws of physics. Causality is a law of physics. Therefore it is logically impossible for any law of causality to apply before that law of causality even exists. The first premise is therefore logically necessarily false. Not just probably false. It is necessarily false. It can never be the case that “everything” that begins to exist has a cause. Nor can “physical reality” be an exception-case to “everything”. Those are part of the contents of what is beginning in “the universe began to exist” and therefore cannot exist before that so as to cause it. Causal laws cannot exist before causal laws exist.”

There are two main things wrong with Carrier’s assertion – one is a philosophical error, and the other is a category definition problem that is already negated if we use ‘creation’ in the premises’ not ‘universe’. The philosophical error is in stating that “causality is a physical law, so it can’t apply before physical laws exist” – because causality is not only a physical law, it is a metaphysical proposition that’s fundamental to reality itself. Carrier’s confusion, which is a popular one, rests on the mistaken assumption that the only things that exist are physical things, which is fundamentally wrong (see my mathematics blogs in the tab here for more on why this is the case). The premise “Everything that begins to exist has a cause” is about ontological dependence, not merely physical cause-effect relationships governed by physics – which are only a subset of all of reality. Moreover, it doesn’t make sense to talk of ‘before’ except in the physical sense (as time is intrinsically linked to space, as per the spacetime of modern physics), so God bringing creation into being is not temporal causality in the sense that a physical human might imagine.

Secondly, my replacing “universe” with “creation” in the premise already addresses Carrier’s objection in a few ways. Creation is metaphysically broader than the physical universe, as “creation” means all contingent reality - not just physical entities or laws. The cause of creation is not limited to physical laws, and the cause that brings creation into existence isn’t subject to physical laws like causality. Replacing ‘universe’ with ‘creation’ grounds causality itself, and no longer remains limited by it. Talking about “creation” rather than “universe,” allows for an atemporal or transcendent cause, which is essential when you realise that time and causality are also created realities.

The claim “Everything that begins to exist has a cause other than itself is literally logically impossible” is false under the above terms, where ‘creation’ replaces ‘universe’ in the syllogism. But if we are just talking about the physical universe – a long-standing matter of discussion in philosophy and cosmology – then applying the standard notion of causality to the origin of the entire physical universe when you think the only things that exist a physical is also problematic. What makes it most problematic is if you make the error in thinking that the only things that exist are physical, which is one of the many limitations of the philosophy of naturalism. 

The Psychology of Thinking Israel is Committing Genocide

Do you think Israel is currently committing genocide in the Middle East? I don’t, but I can see from social media activity that many people do. If you’re one of them, then I’d encourage you to consider why it is you think that. In a moment, I’ll explain why I don’t believe Israel is committing genocide, but before I do, I think there are principally four reasons why someone might be under the misapprehension that Israel is committing genocide - and they range from very bad to bad. I’ll list them hierarchically, from very bad to bad. 

1)    Malicious intent: The individual is blatantly anti-Israel (maybe in some cases hatefully anti-Semitic), and will accuse Israel of genocide reflexively, regardless of facts or definitions, as a way of demonising the state. 

2)    Ideological thrall: The individual holds a rigid, extreme leftist ideological worldview - often aligned with radical activist frameworks – and prejudice against Israel serves their own tribal bias, political agenda, virtue signalling and attention-seeking – all feeding into their overly-simplistic narrative of oppressed vs. oppressor. 

3)    Susceptibility to manipulation: The individual lacks the knowledge and awareness of context that would disavow them of the notion that Israel is committing genocide, and is ripe for manipulation. 

4)    Open to disinformation: The individual has been swayed by the biased reporting and bad actors in society to believe Israel is committing genocide. They have become understandably emotionally overwhelmed by images of suffering and death, and are mistaking visceral outrage for informed judgment. 

Each individual who believes that Israel is committing genocide will fall into one, some, or all of those categories. For example, Greta Thunberg probably falls into categories 1, 2 and 3 – or just 2 and 3 if you’re feeling generous (she is probably too ideologically entrenched to be in 4), so does Roger Waters. Jeremy Corbyn, George Galloway, Owen Jones, and countless other politicians and media figures fall into category 2 (often 2 and 3). Category 3 is bursting at the seams with celebrities and lesser known bourgeois leftist dilettantes in artisanal sunglasses, and so is category 4, where you’ll also find a wide range of people, from gentle, well-meaning Methodist septuagenarians, to teenage keyboard warriors who aren’t yet old enough to shave, to some dear personal friends who I love and respect immensely.  

The commonality in categories 1-3 (but especially categories 1-2), is not just misinformation, but a profound psychological need; to employ simplistic black vs. white logic, to feel morally superior, to divest oneself of internal personal criticism and responsibility, and to belong to a self-congratulatory cause bigger than oneself. If you’re weak in ways that the world needs you to be strong, then this kind of in-group ideology is very seductive. And a surefire way to tell that this is the case is to see how easy it is to predict the other things people in that ideology believe. In a game of collectivist mime troupe bingo, the squares would be filled with similarly predictable dogmas - climate hysteria, ‘eat the rich’ socialism, woke platitudes, no-platforming, performative solidarity rituals - all delivered with the same sanctimonious tone. The commonality in category 4 is primarily the need to locate moral clarity in a morally and socially complex world, and to resolve emotional discomfort with simple, righteous certainty. To be fair, the latter is, in many cases, a humble fault, but in reaching for moral simplicity, many end up embracing a fiction that feels emotionally satisfying, but collapses under the weight of evidence and reason.

Designer Outrage
One more point on the psychology, then we’ll move on to the proposition in question. Here's a provocative but truthful statement. If you’re in categories 1 and 2 (and sometimes 3) and accuse Israel of genocide, but stay silent on Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, and other regional actors who openly call for Israel's destruction, then you're not standing for justice - you're showing everyone that you're, at best, guilty of being manipulated by perversely partisan media sources, and at worst, just an anti-Israel hypocrite, not to be taken in the least bit seriously. In fact, in the latter case, your selectivity is bordering on an anti-semitic weaponisation of language to legitimise your narrow, unbalanced tribalism.

And if you're in the former group, didn't you ever stop to wonder why the people who like to claim 'genocide' for Israel are completely silent on their enemies who actually do wish genocide on Israel? Surely you must have been just a little bit curious about the motives behind this blatant inconsistency? I'm not even commenting at this stage about whether it's fair to accuse Israel of 'genocide'. At this point, I'm merely pointing out the absurd hypocrisy that plagues our society - that even if you do think Israel is behaving awfully, staying completely silent on even more awful behaviour in surrounding regions is preposterous, making you look weak and incompetent. Unless the selective silence is because manipulative sources have convinced you that these Islamic perpetrators of murder, rape, violence, suppression of freedom and human rights abuses are not so bad after all - but that is just as preposterous, and makes you look just as weak and incompetent.

It's the same sort of incongruity we've seen with contemporary feminism for years – feminists such as the woeful Ash Sarkar, Kate Smurthwaite, Grace Blakeley, etc - they'll willingly stand in a safe capital city, holding a megaphone, screaming about "patriarchy" and "toxic masculinity", angry that some people are upset about the rights of the foetus, or that more CEOs are men than women, but they'll never raise an eyebrow about Islam's toxic effects on women, with grooming gangs, repression of rights, sexual inequality, hijabs, honour killings, forced marriages and the oppressive nature of Sharia law towards the female sex. I call this Designer Outrage.

Israel Is Not Committing Genocide
I’ve pointed out the hypocrisy of those claiming Israel is committing genocide, while remaining silent on even worse regional actors surrounding them. For those attempting a more balanced view, but still holding the view that Israel is committing genocide, let's consider that claim a bit further. I share some of the public criticisms of much of Israel's conduct towards the Palestinians, but I also believe that throwing around the word 'genocide' to describe Israel's actions isn't just factually wrong - it's a lazy distortion of what the term means. Genocide refers to the intentional extermination of a people. Misusing the language of atrocity trivialises actual genocides - like the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide, or the Armenian genocide. It's not just bad history; it's offensive to actual victims of genocide whose families were actually targeted for eradication (in actual fact, as the Jews were in the Holocaust, and like they still are now by murderous ideologues in surrounding Islamic nations).

Too many people are cunning, slippery, or merely sloppy in their use of the word 'genocide' - because genocide means actions committed with the specific intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. The intent element is crucial, and it's disingenuous to ignore it. Israel's actions, while far from perfect, are undertaken against the continued regional threat of perpetrators who wish to wipe them off the map - fanatical enemies whose tactics are to use Palestinian civilians (and hospitals, for example) as fodder for their murderous aims. What's ironic is that Hamas - who wish to exterminate the Jews, and openly say so - are the ones with genocidal desires, but the same people are silent about this.

While it's appropriate to scrutinise Israel's conduct, failure to recognise the existential threats it faces is failure to engage in the subject appropriately. Hamas explicitly calls for the destruction of Israel and the killing of Jews, as do the leaders in Iran. The October 7th massacre was not only a military operation; it involved targeted killing of civilians, torture, and rape - acts of terrorism driven by genocidal rhetoric. Hamas embeds itself among civilians, uses hospitals and schools for weapons storage, and prevents civilians from evacuating - both to shield fighters and to use civilian casualties as propaganda. This squalid tactic complicates Israel's military response and raises the civilian toll in a tragic environment.

It's hard to deny that some of Israel's responses have been heavy-handed, maybe even excessive, and even, in isolated incidents a shocking mirror image of those who want to destroy them. But if you're going to measure excess, you should at least understand what that means in this context. Try imagining what it's like attempting to govern a country continually under existential threat from some of the most wicked and morally devoid Islamic fundamentalist groups on the planet - a country that continually lives in self-defense against an adversary that openly calls for its destruction, and will use any tactic necessary to achieve its aims. It's difficult to imagine a country not acting excessively under those conditions - these are extreme acts of self-preservation, where Gazans are also many of the most innocent victims of this complex, harrowing situation.

So, I'd really encourage you to not use the word 'genocide' when describing Israel’s predicament - especially as they are a people who have themselves experienced one of the worst genocides in human history, and certainly the most systematically executed, and still carry the scars today. Words like "genocide" carry historical trauma and legal implications - and misusing language dilutes meaning and compromises the full truth and can blind us to the real moral and legal complexities at hand. Criticising Israel's military actions is one thing - but calling it ‘genocide’ undermines credibility, and perversely distracts from both the complexity of the situation, and the real goals of groups like Hamas and Iran, who do actually commit egregious violations of international law that are much more like genocide than what Israel is doing.

Change Your Mind

A healthy mind is one that can embrace change when there is good reason to. Be wary of people who show you that they are so rooted in a viewpoint or belief system that you know there is almost zero chance that they will change their mind. In fact, it’s almost a form of self-dehumanisation, which I’ll explain. We know how hard it is for people to change their mind generally, even in light of new evidence that should prompt them. And this barrier and the intransigence is exacerbated when the individual in question is a public figure whose status, reputation and income depends on holding those views. You know the sort of people I mean – I’m thinking of people like (to name just four) Richard Dawkins, Jeremy Corbyn, Ken Ham and Greta Thunberg (although her condition seems to have other factors).

For those who have a lot riding on it, there are three fundamental costs. The first is that changing your mind requires you to admit not only that you were mistaken but that you were unreliable or defective about how you drew your conclusions. The second is that it often alienates the very audience or community that supported or elevated you in the first place. The third is that it can kind of feel like a partial death of self – a minor dismantling of part of who you are, which could even provoke a deep, destabilising crisis of meaning.

Wrapped up in that triumvirate cost package is the potential for economic cost (loss of income), loss of future opportunity in that particular niche, accusations of betraying the tribe, selling out, giving ammunition to "the other side”, and exposure to personal weakness and vulnerability that will likely be disconcerting. It’s no wonder changing one’s mind brings such a sense of foreboding, but the inability to do so is far worse.

I said that inability to change one's mind is a form of self-dehumanisation – and this is because it robs oneself of the most valuable human qualities. Although individuals caught in this trap are usually unaware of the damage it’s doing - it brings about a fundamental surrender of core human capacities, like truthseeking, curiosity, growth, and adaptive intelligence that are so vital to human well-being. In one sense, to cling rigidly to a belief when there is every reason to change your mind on it is to reject the very faculties that distinguish us from machines or ideologies. A person who refuses to revise their worldview effectively reduces themselves to a kind of deterministic script with a predictable output, and somewhat ceases to be a fully living mind. That’s why it’s a form of self-dehumanisation – it’s the wanton trading of the richness of human fluidity and potential adventure of truthseeking for the sterile comfort of conformity, dwelling in the realm of a parochial illusion. We don't just close our minds when we are unwilling or unable to change them - we abandon a part of our humanity, and taint the rich potential of our own evolving selves.