Steven Pinker, Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne resign from the FFRF over 'imposer of a new religion, complete with dogma, blasphemy, and heretics'

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https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2024/12/29/steve-pinker-resigns-from-the-freedom-of-religion-foundation/

After biologist Jerry Coyne wrote an article denounced as anti-trans so the Freedom From Religion Foundation took it down.

Pinker wrote to the FFRF

I think it’s important to distinguish two things:

1. The right to bodily autonomy, an ethical issue.

2. The nature of sex in the living world, a scientific issue.

Some trans activists believe that the only way to ensure the first is to rewrite the second, imposing what we regard as fallacious and tendentious claims in defiance of our best scientific understanding. This is unfortunate for two reasons: it’s a conceptual error, confusing the moral and the empirical, and it’s counterproductive to force people to choose between trans rights and scientific reality. Those who favor scientific reality will be alienated from the cause of safeguarding trans rights.

I see FFRF as in the vanguard of separating key moral and political commitments from honest scientific inquiry (after all, a major impetus for enshrining religious doctrine such as creationism is that it is necessary for the preservation of moral values). Many people have noted that the radical factions of the trans movement have taken on some of the worst features of religion, such as the imposition of dogma and the excommunication and vilification of heretics. FFRF can be firmly on the side of trans rights without advancing tendentious (and almost certainly false) biological claims. Of course, it’s fine for views that we regard as tendentious to be expressed in FFRF forums, as long as respectful disagreements are allowed to be expressed as well.

I have been watching this with interest on twitter. Sadly, I suspect not much will happen at this time.

Thanks for posting, it's been covered in the Telegraph too https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/12/30/richard-dawkins-quits-atheism-foundation-over-trans-rights/

Many of us have said for some time that gender ideology has all the trappings of a religion!

I wonder if any of them are likely to reconsider their rather simple faith in empiricism as somehow preventing poor thinking in a society?

Maybe it's not actually that religion is what causes some people to be bad thinkers? Or authoritarian?

I am not sure how Pinker managed this idea, but Dawkins was never really able to deal with questions about non-religious ideological regimes. It seems to me now it was because he didn't really understand them, he is only now able to see for himself how people can take any ideological approach in the same way.

Another one bites the dust, the article that Jerry Coyne wrote was, polite, factual and the truth, the article the lesbian/queer/trans they/them'er wrote that he responded to was a load drivel and had nothing what so ever to do with FFRF's stated aims. They took the truth down and kept the drivel up, go figure. 😒

Not sure if this is Coyne's original article that was taken down?
But it's very good, and everything that is argued well and often on here.

web.archive.org/web/20241227095242/freethoughtnow.org/biology-is-not-bigotry/

All of this and especially this:
Maybe it's not actually that religion is what causes some people to be bad thinkers? Or authoritarian?

Its clear that religion is just one expression of human tendency to form social cohesion around an idea. What the idea is or its merit does not seem important.

It is only when that idea builds up significant emotional attachment behind it that it takes on the form of a zealous ideology. Emotion is the driver, even if you are espousing scientific dogmatism. Dawkins is something of a zealot himself.

Not sure if this is Coyne's original article that was taken down?
But it's very good, and everything that is argued well and often on here.

Pretty sure it was, many of the #bekind comments are idiotic.

Sorry meant to quote but formatting disappeared @BabaYagasHouse

Here's one example:

“Tendentious arguments about the definition of sex are not part of either mission.”
The only thing tendentious that I see are the tired, lazy, and reductive arguments scattered throughout this article. Most of what’s here is of the ‘not-even-wrong’ variety given how woefully untethered this is to any modern understanding of social psychology as it pertains to trans issues and the history of trans identity writ large. It is, in fact, exactly the sort of article you’d expect to be written by a biologist, particularly one who’s never stepped outside of his own field yet insists on wading into areas he’s ill-equipped to address.

Issues of trans identity and trans rights are rooted more in social sciences like history and psychology than evolutionary biology. Experts in one camp trying to assume authority over the other is a surefire way to make a proper mess of things — and a fool of oneself. And that’s what’s happened here. The fact that Coyne thinks biological sex is the most relevant or salient data point when it comes to trans issues is risible. It’s like appealing to the sexual practices of bullfrogs in the legal battle over gay marriage. There’s a whole wide world of complex and nuanced phenomena outside your evo bio fiefdom, Jerry. I encourage you to set aside your dogmatism long enough to engage some of that literature and history.

Lastly, whinging about the religious-like fervor of “gender activism” has got to be the apotheosis of rich irony given Coyne’s decadeslong track record online. Anyone who’s followed his work for any amount of time has surely witnessed the dogmatic, domineering way in which he routinely expresses himself. The guy is a massive hypocrite who perorates about free speech and pokes fun at safe spaces, then blocks people whenever they disagree with him. The only other contexts in which I’ve seen his level of closed-mindedness and unwillingness to examine contrary evidence and perspectives are in fundamentalist Christianity and similarly culty spaces.

For years Coyne, who prides himself a “skeptic,” has hosted extreme-fringe ideas and voices from domains like history and biblical scholarship. He surely would never host such fringe ideas from his own field, yet apparently sees no contradiction in boosting crackpot voices in other fields, so long as the ideas they’re espousing go some way toward supporting his nontheistic worldview. You can call this many things uncritical confirmation bias among them but skepticism it is not.

The fact that Coyne is still a FFRF board member is appalling to me. Whatever the value of his writings circa 2014, his work has moved on in recent years from primarily evo bio and adjacent to being a boorish megaphone for his scientism, philosophical ineptitude, and confused identity politics, this latest tirade serving as a prime example. He is no friend of the secular community, and we need to be much more circumspect about which voices we promote.

To wrap this up, my wish is that those who lack training in and familiarity with the literature on specific questions of trans identity and trans rights would approach those issues with the same humility and deference to research and expertise that they expect and demand from non-experts who blunder into their own field. I see no such humility from Coyne and others of his ilk.

I’m deeply disturbed by the publication of this piece by the FFRF. I’ve opted to cancel my membership and unsubscribe for the time being.

The fact that Coyne thinks biological sex is the most relevant or salient data point when it comes to trans issues is risible.

I mean, where to start with this? Stupid pompous wanker.

Some good refuting responses to those comments too I think.

Though, it really highlights for me the apparent unsolvability of this issue.
All the same entrenched arguments that have become yes, as Pinker says, like religious belief now.

I feel like it's destined to go on forever!

There's a lot of push back on FFRF's website because they've taken down JC's article. #Free thought for me but not for thee time 😂

Freedom From Religion Foundation supports LGBTQIA-plus rights - Freethought Now

I've never really considered this before, feel like this section of the response below has led me to a Homer Simpson "doh" moment

Issues of trans identity and trans rights are rooted more in social sciences like history and psychology than evolutionary biology. Experts in one camp trying to assume authority over the other is a surefire way to make a proper mess of things — and a fool of oneself.

I think as much as anything this is a tussle between "pure" empirical sciences, like biology and social sciences ( I would not include History here by the way, as it is subject to testable evidence) to assert authority over each other. I also think this is wrong -headed. Trans identity should rightly be observed and chronicled by social scientists but they have no place (re)defining biological categories.

Wow, that comment section is great. Lots of people talking sense.

Is it true that he tends to host questionable guests of a type that he wouldn't even consider within his own field?

This is a common thing with some of the skeptic types on things like the historicity of Jesus, for example, taking seriously theories that would make one a laughing stock within historical circles. A lot of these guys seem to struggle with how historical evidence works.

They haven't learned anything in the years since Ophelia Benson drew the wrath of the dick-panderers at the laughably named Freethought Blogs, have they? Sceptics and scientific my arse, they're just men who hate established religions. A cult that pushes sexual depravity is right up their alley.

Apparently this "non binary" idiot whose nonsensical sophistry he was refuting is a religious believer, not a "skeptic".

I know nothing of any of these people, but the idea of classifying history as a 'social science' shows a lack of understanding of how humans study and explore the world.

Classifying some 'social science' as science has been problematic since at least the 1970s when some people started to make it acceptable to select the data they present to fit their pre-existing theories. The senseless wittering around gender, and queer theory generally, demonstrates that.

Serious thinkers in all disciplines need to counter that tendency. Which isn't easy when the pressure within academia is to publish publish publish, and if you can get buy-in form the commercial world you've done well.

It does however seem to be true that a commitment to open debate, examining evidence, and questioning preconceived ideas does.protect against those things.

Dawkins is opposed to organized religion because it's against those empiricist, scientific ideals. Just as gender ideology is.

A lot of people who criticise 'organised religion' see it as a monolith, often in the shape of what they (thought they) saw in a low-church protestant childhood, rather than as the complicated, various and disputatious thing it is. Seeing it as a monolith meant they could just say 'that's bad and stupid' and move on without considering it in its complexity.

Simplistic thinking is the problem. That's how genderism managed to sneak up and bite them on the arse.

I tweeted Matt Dilahunty and told him he was in a religion, he blocked me. Jimmy Snow has also swallowed the cool aid.

Lke many cultural things, the fine details are fascinating to those involved, but irrelevant to those who are not.

All organized religion makes truth claims by reference to authority rather than empirical scientific enquiry. That's enough for me to know I oppose it.

Not a very exact analogy, but all hunting involves killing animals for pleasure. I don't need to understand the cultural and societal history of all of the various hunts in order to know that I'm opposed to them all.

Gender Ideology ruins everything. It does show how committed men are to the [redacted] industry though.