CV NEWS FEED // Atheists who have long supported the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF), an organization that promotes further secularizing the government, are breaking ranks with it because of its embrace of radical gender ideology.
In a recent essay published by The Wall Street Journal, Jerry Coyne, professor emeritus of ecology and evolution at the University of Chicago, explained why he and other high-profile skeptics, including Richard Dawkins and Steven Pinker, have publicly cut ties with the organization.
Coyne once embraced the FFRF’s mission to defend the separation of church and state, promote morality without faith, and champion “science and rationality over dogma and superstition.” But now, he said, the group has sacrificed scientific integrity for ideological conformity.
“The definition, development and recognition of biological sex is a scientific issue, while the rights of gender variants is an ethical one,” Coyne concluded. “There is nothing in biology that supports stigmatizing gender nonconformists, so it’s wrong to force people to choose between trans rights and scientific reality.”
Coyne says the conflict started in November, when the FFRF published an essay titled “What is a woman?” that concluded: “A woman is whoever she says she is.”
That essay, Coyne said, contradicted basic biological facts, such as the reality of two sexes across all animal species, and he responded to it with a rebuttal article, Biology is not bigotry, which the FFRF briefly published before swiftly retracting it. The organization stated the piece “caused distress” and “does not reflect our values.”
The organization then reaffirmed its support for the LGBT community and, in an unusual move, disbanded its entire advisory board following the resignations of Coyne, Dawkins, and Pinker.
Coyne wrote that “in many ways, transgender ideology is no different from the religious dogma the FFRF was founded to oppose. “It insists on doctrines that are palpably untrue (‘trans women are women’), engages in circular reasoning (‘a woman is whoever she says she is’) and affirms mind/body dualism (‘your self-concept is more real than your actual sex’).”
He noted that gender ideology treats dissent as heresy, branding critics with labels like “transphobe” and attempting to silence those who question its claims.
This mindset, he argued, extends to the “excommunication” of public figures such as J.K. Rowling, who have faced intense backlash for challenging the prevailing orthodoxy on sex and gender.
Coyne said that the FFRF has now become “a gender fundamentalist organization,” and in doing so, has not only stifled debate but also embraced what he calls “quasireligious and unscientific dogma.”
“Like religious fundamentalists, proponents of these views have a fierce conviction that they’re morally correct and know what’s best for you and society,” Coyne stated. “To disagree is to be immoral — sinful, you might say.”
The post Prominent atheists split with leading secular group over ‘quasireligious and unscientific’ gender ideology appeared first on CatholicVote org.