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

[frazzled1]

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.

Sorry but @TheywontletmehavethenameIwant 's post totally blows yours out of the water on this. 😀

This is so true. Oh my god, the spaghettis monster, sky fairy thing! Ad nauseum parroting of this. It was so ubiquitous, nowadays you'd say a bot was generating it!

I agree with you about history but TRA's have already made attempts to rewrite history.
Not just their own history (the stonewall riots) but also people in history declaring them "trans".

Well it has nothing to do with the question of predictive statements and the rising of the sun, which was a point made by Hume specifically - an important epistemological question in philosophy generally and especially the philosophy of science - but you do you I guess.

I will, thank you 😀

In all honesty, I think its an absolutely terrible example for the point being made. Perhaps it landed better in the 1700s.

But that's just me being me. 😁

So much aggressive positioning going on here...which is also one of the reasons that Dawkins can come across very badly. What is it that makes people want to humiliate or put down other posters in this way? Could points not be engaged with in a more reasoned spirit of goodwill?

Does gender have a place in science and or reason ?

To reiterate

Humans are born.
Their age changes over time.
Their sexuality develops and can change over time.
Their faith and beliefs change over time.
They can become or cease to be disabled.
Their nationality and perceived race can change over time
Their marital and parental status can change over time.
Their sex is immutable from conception to death

@TempestTost thank you for your posts. You got what I was fumbling to say. It seems it’s a harder point to understand than I thought!

It struck me as a lot of American men doing all that while desperately wanting to claim oppression. No wonder they leapt onto the trans bandwagon.

Richard Dawkins has published an article in the Spectator

https://archive.ph/Mh8cV

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-myth-of-the-god-shaped-hole/

Are you conflating Dawkins defence of the Scientific Method with Scientific Orthodoxy? He is a stickler for defending the Scientific Method but I see no alternative and nothing wrong in that. Scientific Orthodoxy can be a problem but I don't think we are being blinded to new truths about sex and gender by Orthodoxy. Gender Ideology falls at the first hurdle of Scientific enquiry.

I don't think that's really an accurate interpretation of the "God shaped hole" idea.

But apart from that, it doesn't seem like he is understanding their point, which is probably true as far as it goes, that all of the things that incline some people to believe the dumber forms of religion will make them equally likely to believe the dumber forms of non-religion.

Everyone has a working system of beliefs about the world, and how to live in it, that lies behind the decisions they make and the things they think are good or bad. "Atheism" is not a functional belief set of that type, it's just a characteristic of some belief sets and not others. People who are atheists will still have a whole set of working beliefs about the nature of reality.

The smart and non-smart divide has never been around atheism in particular, there are plenty of quite stupid atheistic belief systems. And "religion" just means a fairly widely socially accepted set of beliefs and practices about the world, which is inevitable (and arguably important) in a society.

If you take away one such set of socially passed on beliefs and practices, people won't remain in a vacuum, they will adopt others - they need these to function in the world. Dawkins has a set of beliefs like this himself, his ethics and way of behaving is very much a post-Christian belief system, it's not just "science" by any stretch.

I guess some could potentially argue that Left/Right brain styles of thinking tend to be gendered... there are some studies, for example, that show the cross connections between the hemispheres are more developed in females, whereas in males the connections tend to be more confined within each hemisphere.
This could suggest a greater facility for the combining of logic and intuition in females than in males.

For what it is worth my sense about intuition is that it is not arrived at out of nothing; it involves a hyper fast assimilation, and subsequent judgment , of observed /detected patterns. It by passes the more laboured rational, methodical process ( or it certainly speeds it up)

Thanks for that info - I just listened to the interview on catch up and I was amazed at Polly Toynbee’s analysis of events, particularly her analysis of ‘woke’ being a slur (the history of the word does not support her statement) and her view that progressive politics is not a salient factor in UK politics. She believes that drawing attention to it was simply part of a failed Tory attempt to fight the general election.

Toynbee also thinks ESG is doing brilliantly for companies; I would disagree given the tensions/issues EDI have created in organisational cultures on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as increasing customer dissatisfaction with political messaging from companies. Her argument seemed to be that the UK isn’t religious so progressive politics will work better/properly in the UK unlike the US. She seems to think that this is all an American cultural issue and not relevant to the UK because the Labour government is providing practical solutions to issues rather than engaging in ideology. I got the impression that she doesn’t view Socialism as an ideology but rather the natural state of society. I’m Left-leaning politically and even I feel like she’s in a different world to the rest of us and providing analysis that’s blinkered considering social developments over the last few years. I hate to say it but she sounded very Guardian columnist 🤷‍♀️

I thought Pinker sounded more objective and more knowledgeable on US politics. He gave useful analysis regarding both side of the political divide in the US. He came across as less ideologically influenced.

Perhaps they should have recorded and played two separate interviews. It wouldn’t have changed the nature of the segment because Toynbee and Pinker just spoke to Davis rather than to each other.

I thought the jibe at the end, from Davis, about vowing not to mention Elon Musk as much in 2025 was a bit strange (and judgemental) for a BBC programme.

There’s not a god-shaped hole. It’s (like a pp suggested) that there’s people who can ‘buy into’ belief systems are likely to buy into beliefs.

It’s not a hole that is being filled by something else. It’s an add-on. And there are so many reasons for the add-on.

If it were a shopping mall they’d be the upmarket Whatstheharm and Sowhat shops then the middle range Bekind and Fearfulofnotfollowing as well as kinksrus and misogyny4you. And then the poor dontfitin shop which really shouldn’t be there at all but for the other shops pulling it towards them, or worse, the parent company’s directive.

I tend to agree with you. I have ADHD and tend to perceive things that other people don't very quickly. It's a combination of fast processing and pattern recognition. It's very useful in my working life and my rational mind then assesses whether my instant reaction was a correct assessment. It usually is and saved my life on at least one occasion (freak accident) and from violence on several occasions.

Interesting - I have slow processing so end up contemplating a lot. I am good at seeing the whole picture. This has also meant I have saved a life! Not so good at making instant decisions but my decisions are the best when I make them 😁

From UtopiaPlanitia - "I got the impression that she doesn’t view Socialism as an ideology but rather the natural state of society."

very well put, it sums up the mind set of the hard left. There can be no arguing with them because they can't be wrong, they're so convinced they're right they can't imagine any other way 'right' way things could be. Reality doesn't stand a chance of getting through that level of conviction, so it'll just crush them and they'll take the rest of us down with them.

religionnews.com/2025/01/06/freedom-from-religion-foundation-dissolves-honorary-board-in-spat-over-trans-issues/

It's strange to have the article describe Richard Dawkins thusly:

"In 2021, the American Humanist Association withdrew its “Humanist of the Year” award from Dawkins over his anti-trans comments."

Dawkins' views are certainly not "anti-trans".

I note from that piece:
In 2011, Coyne received the foundation’s “The Emperor Has No Clothes” award, given to public figures who call out religion in a way reminiscent of the little child in the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale who is not afraid to admit the truth.

Any chance that the organisation will belatedly realise he's due another one?

I think this is what Daniel Kahneman wrote about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow

💯 👏👏👏

How odd that for someone repudiating gender ideology as unscientific and nonsense that Dawkins then refers to Debbie Hayton as ‘her’ in this article. Does he think using preferred pronouns are polite? Being kind? Or irrelevant? Yet missing the point that pronouns are a key part of the how the movement manipulates everyone into accepting its underlying premise.

And from the comments following her article: