Today’s attack at Bondi Beach was, according to early reports, aimed at a Hanukkah celebration.

If that is confirmed, it will be yet another example of something humanity has failed to confront honestly. Religion has repeatedly given stupid people an excuse to commit unspeakable atrocities against their fellow humans.

Not because faith uniquely creates violence, but because it can sanctify it. It allows cruelty to be reframed as virtue, and murder as duty.

Swap God or Allah for a leader, a flag, or a slogan, and cult-of-the-personality politics does exactly the same thing. It licenses hatred and intolerance by outsourcing moral judgement. The mechanism is identical. So is the stupidity.

As Richard Dawkins wrote: “Religion is capable of driving people to such dangerous folly that faith seems to me to qualify as a kind of mental illness”.

And, depressingly current despite being written centuries ago, Voltaire observed: “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities”.

Bondi is not a symbol. It is a beach. Families, swimmers, cafés, celebrations. When ordinary places and innocent civilians become targets, the problem is not misunderstanding or grievance. It is belief taken seriously enough to suspend reason.

Humanity keeps doing this. And then acts surprised.