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.
