Last month, three of the world’s most prominent atheists abruptly resigned their honorary board positions with the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF), an American non-profit organization founded in 1978 to advocate for atheists and agnostics and champion “the separation of church and state.” Evolutionary biologists Jerry Coyne and Richard Dawkins and cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker all cited the ideological capture of the organization by the transgender movement.
Jerry Coyne, a professor emeritus with the University of Chicago, was first. On December 26th, Coyne responded to a column by Kat Grant titled “What is a Woman?” from November 7th, in which Grant concluded, with signature circularity: “A woman is whoever she says she is.” In a response titled “Biology is not bigotry” on FRF’s Freethought Now! blog, Coyne asserted that contrary to Kat’s claims, “the biological definition of ‘woman’ [is] based on gamete type.”
Trans activists came for FFRF with a vengeance, and Coyne’s column was pulled the following day, accompanied by a long, groveling apology titled “Freedom From Religion Foundation supports LGBTQIA-plus rights.” Co-presidents Dan Barker and Annie Gaylor painstakingly detailed the LGBT activism of their organization; condemned the enemies of the trans movement, both foreign and domestic, and concluded their struggle session by repudiating Coyne’s views:
Despite our best efforts to champion reason and equality, we recognize mistakes can happen, and this incident is a reminder of the importance of constant reflection and growth. Publishing this post was an error of judgment, and we have decided to remove it as it does not reflect our values or principles. We regret any distress caused by this post and are committed to ensuring it doesn’t happen again…We stand firmly with the LGBTQIA-plus community and their allies in advocating for equality, dignity and the freedom to live without fear of religiously motivated discrimination.
In response, Coyne published an open letter to his blog on December 29, resigning and accusing FRFF of “censorious” behaviour when he was “simply promoting a biological rather than a psychological definition of sex, and I do not understand why you would consider that ‘distressing’ and also an attempt to hurt LGBTQIA+ people, which I would never do.” He noted that when he had emailed Annie Gaylor about his article being disappeared, he did not even receive the courtesy of a response. (Atheist Lawrence Krauss has republished the piece on his Substack.)
Furthermore, Coyne added, the “gender ideology which caused you to take down my article is itself quasi-religious, having many aspects of religions and cults, including dogma, blasphemy, belief in what is palpably untrue (‘a woman is whoever she says she is’), apostasy, and a tendency to ignore science when it contradicts a preferred ideology.”
Steven Pinker concurred, submitting his own resignation letter almost simultaneously, citing “your decision, announced yesterday, to censor an article by fellow Board member Jerry Coyne, and to slander him as an opponent of LGBTQIA+ rights.” FRFF, Pinker stated, has become “the imposer of a new religion, complete with dogma, blasphemy, and heretics.” Pinker added that the foundation “has turned its back on reason” and that Freethought Now! has become a “sad joke.”
Richard Dawkins resigned on December 29. “Publishing the silly and unscientific ‘What is a Woman’ article by Kat Grant was a minor error of judgement, redeemed by the decision to publish a rebuttal by a distinguished scientist from the relevant field, namely Biology, Jerry Coyne,” he wrote. “But alas, the sequel was an act of unseemly panic when you caved in to hysterical squeals from predictable quarters and retrospectively censored that excellent rebuttal.” He added that to do so without even informing Coyne was “an act of lamentable discourtesy.”
It has been fascinating to watch the culture wars come to the atheist community. Dawkins has been tangling with trans activists for several years; in January 2024, he vehemently responded to an article defending gender ideology, stating: “This ridiculous article (shame on the once-great Scientific American) ignorantly misunderstands the nature of the sex binary. … Sex is not defined by chromosomes, nor by anatomy, nor by psychology or sociology, nor by personal inclination, nor by ‘assignment at birth’, but by gamete size.”
He added archly: “You may argue about ‘gender’ if you wish (biologists have better things to do) but sex is a true binary, one of rather few in biology.” In 2021, the American Humanist Association withdrew its “humanist of the year award,” which it had bestowed on Dawkins back in 1996, due to his “history of making statements that use the guise of scientific discourse to demean marginalised groups, an approach antithetical to humanist values.” Pinker has similarly run afoul of transgender activist groups, who have carefully detailed his sins in online lists.
While there is certainly schadenfreude in watching the sneering anti-theists discover that the New Atheist Apocalypse is just as dogmatic as the religions they despise, it must be noted that the very concept of “humanist values” has always been up for grabs. Science seeks to demonstrate what is; the idea of godless ethics is an entirely different question, and Dawkins, Coyne, and Pinker have been at the forefront of championing truly repulsive applications of practical atheism. In 2014, Dawkins responded to a woman asking about a prenatal Down syndrome diagnosis by telling her to: “Abort it and try again. It would be immoral to bring it into the world if you have the choice.”
He defended his advice by claiming it was “very civilised” and that “I do not for one moment apologise for approaching moral philosophic questions in a logical way. There’s a place for emotion & this isn’t it.” In Dawkins’ atheist ethics, it turns out, using abortion to eugenically destroy people with Down syndrome is both “civilised” and “logical.” He did not explain why, especially considering the fact that a staggering 99% of people with Down syndrome report being “happy with their lives.” There is no “mercy” in this killing—just an atheist’s analysis of what their lives are worth.
Stephen Pinker has gone further, writing in the New York Times that laws against infanticide are difficult to defend (one is tempted to add: at least, for atheists). According to Pinker, unborn children don’t possess any more morally significant traits “than mice do.” Jerry Coyne, for his part, has actually bemoaned that residual Christianity has prevented the legalization of “the euthanasia of newborns, who have no ability or faculties to decide whether to end their lives,” and stated that although “the topic seems verboten now, I believe some day the practice will be widespread, and it will be for the better.” If we euthanize cats and dogs, he added, why not babies?
Coyne, Pinker, and Dawkins are correct in their defence of the biological barricades against the transgender revolutionaries, but they have long championed the post-Christian society that made the transgender revolution possible, if not inevitable.Before social conservatives view these men as co-belligerents in defence of civilization, we should recognize that this atheist set might not be Bolsheviks, but they are Mensheviks—and their “ethics” are every bit as ugly as those they now oppose.
Atheists Against Transgenderism: the Menshevik Revolution
Photo: Photo by Pierre-Philippe MARCOU / AFP
Last month, three of the world’s most prominent atheists abruptly resigned their honorary board positions with the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF), an American non-profit organization founded in 1978 to advocate for atheists and agnostics and champion “the separation of church and state.” Evolutionary biologists Jerry Coyne and Richard Dawkins and cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker all cited the ideological capture of the organization by the transgender movement.
Jerry Coyne, a professor emeritus with the University of Chicago, was first. On December 26th, Coyne responded to a column by Kat Grant titled “What is a Woman?” from November 7th, in which Grant concluded, with signature circularity: “A woman is whoever she says she is.” In a response titled “Biology is not bigotry” on FRF’s Freethought Now! blog, Coyne asserted that contrary to Kat’s claims, “the biological definition of ‘woman’ [is] based on gamete type.”
Trans activists came for FFRF with a vengeance, and Coyne’s column was pulled the following day, accompanied by a long, groveling apology titled “Freedom From Religion Foundation supports LGBTQIA-plus rights.” Co-presidents Dan Barker and Annie Gaylor painstakingly detailed the LGBT activism of their organization; condemned the enemies of the trans movement, both foreign and domestic, and concluded their struggle session by repudiating Coyne’s views:
In response, Coyne published an open letter to his blog on December 29, resigning and accusing FRFF of “censorious” behaviour when he was “simply promoting a biological rather than a psychological definition of sex, and I do not understand why you would consider that ‘distressing’ and also an attempt to hurt LGBTQIA+ people, which I would never do.” He noted that when he had emailed Annie Gaylor about his article being disappeared, he did not even receive the courtesy of a response. (Atheist Lawrence Krauss has republished the piece on his Substack.)
Furthermore, Coyne added, the “gender ideology which caused you to take down my article is itself quasi-religious, having many aspects of religions and cults, including dogma, blasphemy, belief in what is palpably untrue (‘a woman is whoever she says she is’), apostasy, and a tendency to ignore science when it contradicts a preferred ideology.”
Steven Pinker concurred, submitting his own resignation letter almost simultaneously, citing “your decision, announced yesterday, to censor an article by fellow Board member Jerry Coyne, and to slander him as an opponent of LGBTQIA+ rights.” FRFF, Pinker stated, has become “the imposer of a new religion, complete with dogma, blasphemy, and heretics.” Pinker added that the foundation “has turned its back on reason” and that Freethought Now! has become a “sad joke.”
Richard Dawkins resigned on December 29. “Publishing the silly and unscientific ‘What is a Woman’ article by Kat Grant was a minor error of judgement, redeemed by the decision to publish a rebuttal by a distinguished scientist from the relevant field, namely Biology, Jerry Coyne,” he wrote. “But alas, the sequel was an act of unseemly panic when you caved in to hysterical squeals from predictable quarters and retrospectively censored that excellent rebuttal.” He added that to do so without even informing Coyne was “an act of lamentable discourtesy.”
It has been fascinating to watch the culture wars come to the atheist community. Dawkins has been tangling with trans activists for several years; in January 2024, he vehemently responded to an article defending gender ideology, stating: “This ridiculous article (shame on the once-great Scientific American) ignorantly misunderstands the nature of the sex binary. … Sex is not defined by chromosomes, nor by anatomy, nor by psychology or sociology, nor by personal inclination, nor by ‘assignment at birth’, but by gamete size.”
He added archly: “You may argue about ‘gender’ if you wish (biologists have better things to do) but sex is a true binary, one of rather few in biology.” In 2021, the American Humanist Association withdrew its “humanist of the year award,” which it had bestowed on Dawkins back in 1996, due to his “history of making statements that use the guise of scientific discourse to demean marginalised groups, an approach antithetical to humanist values.” Pinker has similarly run afoul of transgender activist groups, who have carefully detailed his sins in online lists.
While there is certainly schadenfreude in watching the sneering anti-theists discover that the New Atheist Apocalypse is just as dogmatic as the religions they despise, it must be noted that the very concept of “humanist values” has always been up for grabs. Science seeks to demonstrate what is; the idea of godless ethics is an entirely different question, and Dawkins, Coyne, and Pinker have been at the forefront of championing truly repulsive applications of practical atheism. In 2014, Dawkins responded to a woman asking about a prenatal Down syndrome diagnosis by telling her to: “Abort it and try again. It would be immoral to bring it into the world if you have the choice.”
He defended his advice by claiming it was “very civilised” and that “I do not for one moment apologise for approaching moral philosophic questions in a logical way. There’s a place for emotion & this isn’t it.” In Dawkins’ atheist ethics, it turns out, using abortion to eugenically destroy people with Down syndrome is both “civilised” and “logical.” He did not explain why, especially considering the fact that a staggering 99% of people with Down syndrome report being “happy with their lives.” There is no “mercy” in this killing—just an atheist’s analysis of what their lives are worth.
Stephen Pinker has gone further, writing in the New York Times that laws against infanticide are difficult to defend (one is tempted to add: at least, for atheists). According to Pinker, unborn children don’t possess any more morally significant traits “than mice do.” Jerry Coyne, for his part, has actually bemoaned that residual Christianity has prevented the legalization of “the euthanasia of newborns, who have no ability or faculties to decide whether to end their lives,” and stated that although “the topic seems verboten now, I believe some day the practice will be widespread, and it will be for the better.” If we euthanize cats and dogs, he added, why not babies?
Coyne, Pinker, and Dawkins are correct in their defence of the biological barricades against the transgender revolutionaries, but they have long championed the post-Christian society that made the transgender revolution possible, if not inevitable.Before social conservatives view these men as co-belligerents in defence of civilization, we should recognize that this atheist set might not be Bolsheviks, but they are Mensheviks—and their “ethics” are every bit as ugly as those they now oppose.
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