Since some people are getting a paywall I’ll post the article text here:
Richard Dawkins has resigned from an atheism foundation over its “imposition” of a “new religion” of transgenderism.
Prof Dawkins, the evolutionary biologist and atheist, stepped down from the board of the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) on Saturday after it censored an article supporting the belief that gender is biological.
Prof Dawkins accused the group of caving to the “hysterical squeals” of cancel culture after it deleted the article from its website, saying it was a “mistake” to have published it.
His resignation followed that of two other scientists, Jerry Coyne and Steven Pinker, who accused the foundation of imposing an ideology with the “dogma, blasphemy, and heretics” of a religion.
The scientists’ resignations come after FFRF’s Freethought Now! website published a piece last month by Kat Grant, entitled “What is a Woman?”, which argued that “any attempt to define womanhood on biological terms is inadequate” and that “a woman is whoever she says she is”.
In response to the piece, Prof Coyne, a fellow board member and biologist, wrote an article last week called “Biology is not Bigotry”, in which he defended “the biological definition of ‘woman’ based on gamete type” – or reproductive cells.
However, FFRF later pulled the article after a backlash and released a lengthy statement apologising for the “distress” it had caused.
“Despite our best efforts to champion reason and equality, mistakes can happen, and this incident is a reminder of the importance of constant reflection and growth,” co-presidents Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor wrote.
“Publishing this post was an error of judgment, and we have decided to remove it as it does not reflect our values and principles. We regret any distress caused by this post and are committed to ensuring it doesn’t happen again.”
‘Quasi-religious’ ideology
Following the atheist foundation’s decision to unpublish his article, Prof Coyne accused the group of peddling a “quasi-religious” ideology.
“That is a censorious behavior I cannot abide,” he wrote in an email. “I 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.”
“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.”
Prof Pinker, the US-Canadian psychologist, announced his resignation from the board by lamenting that the FFRF was “no longer a defender of freedom from religion but the imposer of a new religion, complete with dogma, blasphemy, and heretics”.
Prof Dawkins described publishing Grant’s “silly and unscientific” article as a “minor error of judgment”, but that the decision to remove Prof Coyne’s rebuttal was “an act of unseemly panic”.
He continued: “Moreover, to summarily take it down without even informing the author of your intention was an act of lamentable discourtesy to a member of your own advisory board. A board which I now leave with regret.”
Grant is a non-binary author and fellow at the FFRF, focusing on state versus Church issues that specifically impact the LGBTQ-plus community.
In their November article, Grant argued a woman cannot be defined as someone with a vagina, uterus or the ability to conceive, as this would exclude intersex people, women who have hysterectomies and those who have gone through menopause.
Grant claimed using biology to define female identity is “inadequate” and alleged that the views of groups who have fought against gender ideology “disregard both medical science and lived experience”.
‘New definition of woman’
In his response to Grant’s article, Prof Coyne accused the author of attempting “to force ideology onto nature” in order to “concoct a new definition of ‘woman’”.
“Why should sex be changeable while other physical traits cannot? Feelings don’t create reality,” he wrote. “Instead, in biology ‘sex’ is traditionally defined by the size and mobility of reproductive cells.
“It is not ‘transphobic’ to accept the biological reality of binary sex and to reject concepts based on ideology. One should never have to choose between scientific reality and trans rights.”
Founded in 1976, the FFRF is a US non-profit that promotes the separation of church and state.
Ms Laurie Gaylor, the FFRF president, said: “We have had the greatest respect for Richard Dawkins and Steven Pinker, and are grateful that they sat on our honorary board for so many years.
“We do not feel that support for LGBTQ rights against the religious backlash in the United States is mission creep. This growing difference of opinion probably made such a parting inevitable.”
So he is complaining about the quasi religious zealotry that permeates the ideology as, he himself is anti religion, and resigned of the place because it is now peddling to what is basically a new religion
I agree. And censorship is not the way. I’d only criticize that it goes both ways, as he seems to disregard the hypotheses that support transgender views with equal dogmatism or lack of rigor.
But there’s nothing religious or dogmatic about what the FFRF did. Dawkins is just framing it that way because it’s how he became popular.
He’s just an asshole who constantly acts like an asshole, and people are done with his shit, so he’s having a little fit on his way out the door.
If anyone is acting “religiously” here, it’s Dawkins, who constantly lies and misrepresents medical science because it doesn’t match up the beliefs he grew up with.
Rejecting science (biology in this case) is one major component of religion. Others are dogma (a set of principles that are taken as axioms and never contested, eg gender can be whatever you want it to be), heresy (eg offering a scientific view that differs from dogma, like the fact that biology presents two genders), censorship and apostasy (removing such an article for disagreeing with the dogma, regardless of scientific facts).
Seems to me like Dawkins slightly overreacted, but it’s understandable because he did so based on the religious-like fervor exhibited by those who would remove an article published by a biologist, debating biological classification, because they disagree with its implications.
For all the talk about the unscientific right, it seems to me like the left ignores science just as much when it’s not what they want to hear - what their group has already agreed to be true. This video comes to mind: https://youtu.be/zB_OApdxcno
I’m old and trying to keep up with the times, remind me; what is the difference between transsexual and transgender? It seems like the word, transsexual, I haven’t heard in a longass time.
Gender and sex are not exactly the same thing, and you have to be purposefully obtuse to ignore the entire context of the conversation. I won’t entertain your faux ignorance. You’ve had multiple people correct you on this, and you haven’t responded to any of them, because you know you’re not up to the task.
If you say sex=gender, you are factually incorrect. Try again. If they were exactly synonymous, then words would also have a sex. Tell me where “telephone’s” genitalia are.
I know gender and sex aren’t the same thing. You could tell that because I provided two meanings for gender, only one of which was sex. Your problem seems to be I don’t accept your definition of gender.
But this isn’t really your problem, because it’s not your definition. Instead, it’s a newer definition that’s been tacked onto the word, that you have accepted and propagated, and now are jumping on others for not doing the same. I ‘d be lying if I said I don’t understand why you’d want to change the meaning, to make it something else. It’s a good word for you. It’s a word that is already known, so it’s in the collective mindset. A new word would be harder to get ‘out there’, while another (weaker - lesser used) word wouldn’t generate as much buzz and discussion when you misuse it. It’s a cunning thing to do. It’s also unacceptable and vile. If we’re changing words’ meanings, then you’re welcome to find out
That’s stupid.
Has in the meanwhile been changed to mean “I concede that I am in the wrong regarding this matter and will take myself out of the conversation for future replies”.
To reinforce this change in meaning, I’ll be blocking you now. Have a good rest of the day.
heresy (eg offering a scientific view that differs from dogma, like the fact that biology presents two genders)
I often find – and such appears to be the case here – that when people make these arguments that they either do not know the difference between sex and gender, or are feigning ignorance.
Sex is not binary, and the “anti-trans” folks pretend that it is. Intersex people exist.
All your premises are wrong. The existence of trans people doesn’t reject biology, quite the contrary, advanced biology supports the notion that sex can vary beyond a binary and is quite distinct from gender and sexual identity (which are psychosocial phenomena). There is no organized dogma on the LGBTQ+ support community. If anything, in fighting, disagreement and diversity is what defines it, not homogeneity or conformity. Our understanding of sexual identities, gender and transexuality is the result of scientific discourse, through and through. From phenomenological descriptions, to anthropological, sociological, psychological and biological study. Our theories and understanding of transexual individuals has changed radically as new evidence has come forth and discoveries and theories evolve around it. It is quite the opposite of dogma. On heresy, there’s only one thing that is considered universally bad, and is the idea that a group of people has to die due to something they can’t control and aren’t at fault for. Like declaring murder against trans people for being born transgender, yes, that’s a definitive faux pas and you will be ostracized for wanting minorities dead. This is a moral stance, but that’s it, it doesn’t imply adhesion to any organized enforcement of belief. There’s also no censorship or apostasy in here. The concept of censorship doesn’t apply as the FFRF is not a government. Coyne is perfectly allowed to publish his ideas somewhere else, just not there. Finally, apostasy doesn’t apply because this is not an organized religion.
The thing here is that Coyne and Dawkins want to declare themselves apostles of their anti-religion movement. Because that’s how they were raised and they lack the critical thinking skills to realize the irony of the situation they’re in. They are uncritically defending Anglican religious values and objectively acting against the anti-religion they claimed to champion. They’re exactly the kind of asshats they would’ve debated against 10 or 20 years ago.
People giving a biological stance against transgender women don’t even make sense because there are many supporting pieces of biological evidence which show that gender exists on a spectrum.
Indeed, a woman is whoever says they’re a woman, and it’s very likely that their choice is biologically driven. I know some people might not like a comment like this because it’s “trans med”, and I get the impulse to shoot down comments like this out of fear of being exclusionary, but if you really think about it this doesn’t exclude any known or unknown gender or identity.
He’s right, but religion is pretty natural for humans. Any kind of divorce between religion and core ideals of the society lasts only as long as the cultural movement behind that divorce doesn’t create its own religion. Because the majority of humans are not independent thinking and not rational, even if they are part of a crowd united by stated belief in independent thinking and rationalism.
That’s why ideologies can be divided into “creating a resilient structure of society, because apes will be apes” and “fixing the apes to be better humans”, and the latter kind always fails. Interestingly enough, this division is orthogonal both to right\left and to libertarian\authoritarian categories.
My point was - a person may identify as whatever they want, but they were, in the vast majority of cases, born clearly a man or clearly a woman.
I don’t think he’s against that identity. But to reject reality of nature because of self-identification and to try to impose that upon popular scientific discourses is a religion indeed, just sort of a protest against religious mainstream, not much different from East Roman iconoclasm or Jewish hassidic movements.
Or Christianity itself the way it conquered the old religions in the east Mediterranean, especially Egypt. Egyptian ancient religion from that age was very complex and well-canonized, and with apparently most people just as full of it as today of Christianity. While early Christianity in Egypt was a compact, simple and beautiful set of abstract beliefs ; in some sense Christianity of that time was less magical and allegorical than old religions, but at the same time claimed that its smaller miracles were true.
Since some people are getting a paywall I’ll post the article text here:
Richard Dawkins has resigned from an atheism foundation over its “imposition” of a “new religion” of transgenderism.
Prof Dawkins, the evolutionary biologist and atheist, stepped down from the board of the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) on Saturday after it censored an article supporting the belief that gender is biological.
Prof Dawkins accused the group of caving to the “hysterical squeals” of cancel culture after it deleted the article from its website, saying it was a “mistake” to have published it.
His resignation followed that of two other scientists, Jerry Coyne and Steven Pinker, who accused the foundation of imposing an ideology with the “dogma, blasphemy, and heretics” of a religion.
The scientists’ resignations come after FFRF’s Freethought Now! website published a piece last month by Kat Grant, entitled “What is a Woman?”, which argued that “any attempt to define womanhood on biological terms is inadequate” and that “a woman is whoever she says she is”.
In response to the piece, Prof Coyne, a fellow board member and biologist, wrote an article last week called “Biology is not Bigotry”, in which he defended “the biological definition of ‘woman’ based on gamete type” – or reproductive cells.
However, FFRF later pulled the article after a backlash and released a lengthy statement apologising for the “distress” it had caused.
“Despite our best efforts to champion reason and equality, mistakes can happen, and this incident is a reminder of the importance of constant reflection and growth,” co-presidents Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor wrote.
“Publishing this post was an error of judgment, and we have decided to remove it as it does not reflect our values and principles. We regret any distress caused by this post and are committed to ensuring it doesn’t happen again.”
‘Quasi-religious’ ideology
Following the atheist foundation’s decision to unpublish his article, Prof Coyne accused the group of peddling a “quasi-religious” ideology.
“That is a censorious behavior I cannot abide,” he wrote in an email. “I 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.”
“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.”
Prof Pinker, the US-Canadian psychologist, announced his resignation from the board by lamenting that the FFRF was “no longer a defender of freedom from religion but the imposer of a new religion, complete with dogma, blasphemy, and heretics”.
Prof Dawkins described publishing Grant’s “silly and unscientific” article as a “minor error of judgment”, but that the decision to remove Prof Coyne’s rebuttal was “an act of unseemly panic”.
He continued: “Moreover, to summarily take it down without even informing the author of your intention was an act of lamentable discourtesy to a member of your own advisory board. A board which I now leave with regret.”
Grant is a non-binary author and fellow at the FFRF, focusing on state versus Church issues that specifically impact the LGBTQ-plus community.
In their November article, Grant argued a woman cannot be defined as someone with a vagina, uterus or the ability to conceive, as this would exclude intersex people, women who have hysterectomies and those who have gone through menopause.
Grant claimed using biology to define female identity is “inadequate” and alleged that the views of groups who have fought against gender ideology “disregard both medical science and lived experience”.
‘New definition of woman’
In his response to Grant’s article, Prof Coyne accused the author of attempting “to force ideology onto nature” in order to “concoct a new definition of ‘woman’”.
“Why should sex be changeable while other physical traits cannot? Feelings don’t create reality,” he wrote. “Instead, in biology ‘sex’ is traditionally defined by the size and mobility of reproductive cells.
“It is not ‘transphobic’ to accept the biological reality of binary sex and to reject concepts based on ideology. One should never have to choose between scientific reality and trans rights.”
Founded in 1976, the FFRF is a US non-profit that promotes the separation of church and state.
Ms Laurie Gaylor, the FFRF president, said: “We have had the greatest respect for Richard Dawkins and Steven Pinker, and are grateful that they sat on our honorary board for so many years.
“We do not feel that support for LGBTQ rights against the religious backlash in the United States is mission creep. This growing difference of opinion probably made such a parting inevitable.”
So he is complaining about the quasi religious zealotry that permeates the ideology as, he himself is anti religion, and resigned of the place because it is now peddling to what is basically a new religion
Makes total sense actually
I agree. And censorship is not the way. I’d only criticize that it goes both ways, as he seems to disregard the hypotheses that support transgender views with equal dogmatism or lack of rigor.
But there’s nothing religious or dogmatic about what the FFRF did. Dawkins is just framing it that way because it’s how he became popular.
He’s just an asshole who constantly acts like an asshole, and people are done with his shit, so he’s having a little fit on his way out the door.
If anyone is acting “religiously” here, it’s Dawkins, who constantly lies and misrepresents medical science because it doesn’t match up the beliefs he grew up with.
Rejecting science (biology in this case) is one major component of religion. Others are dogma (a set of principles that are taken as axioms and never contested, eg gender can be whatever you want it to be), heresy (eg offering a scientific view that differs from dogma, like the fact that biology presents two genders), censorship and apostasy (removing such an article for disagreeing with the dogma, regardless of scientific facts).
Seems to me like Dawkins slightly overreacted, but it’s understandable because he did so based on the religious-like fervor exhibited by those who would remove an article published by a biologist, debating biological classification, because they disagree with its implications.
For all the talk about the unscientific right, it seems to me like the left ignores science just as much when it’s not what they want to hear - what their group has already agreed to be true. This video comes to mind: https://youtu.be/zB_OApdxcno
Who is rejecting biology?
Other than Dawkins I mean?
It seems like you’re confused between sex and gender?
I’m old and trying to keep up with the times, remind me; what is the difference between transsexual and transgender? It seems like the word, transsexual, I haven’t heard in a longass time.
“Transsexual” is kind of being phased out in favor of “Transgender,” I believe.
Gender is a synonim for sex. It is also used when speaking about words - in some languages, words have a gender.
That’s stupid.
Gender and sex are not exactly the same thing, and you have to be purposefully obtuse to ignore the entire context of the conversation. I won’t entertain your faux ignorance. You’ve had multiple people correct you on this, and you haven’t responded to any of them, because you know you’re not up to the task.
If you say sex=gender, you are factually incorrect. Try again. If they were exactly synonymous, then words would also have a sex. Tell me where “telephone’s” genitalia are.
I know gender and sex aren’t the same thing. You could tell that because I provided two meanings for gender, only one of which was sex. Your problem seems to be I don’t accept your definition of gender.
But this isn’t really your problem, because it’s not your definition. Instead, it’s a newer definition that’s been tacked onto the word, that you have accepted and propagated, and now are jumping on others for not doing the same. I ‘d be lying if I said I don’t understand why you’d want to change the meaning, to make it something else. It’s a good word for you. It’s a word that is already known, so it’s in the collective mindset. A new word would be harder to get ‘out there’, while another (weaker - lesser used) word wouldn’t generate as much buzz and discussion when you misuse it. It’s a cunning thing to do. It’s also unacceptable and vile. If we’re changing words’ meanings, then you’re welcome to find out
Has in the meanwhile been changed to mean “I concede that I am in the wrong regarding this matter and will take myself out of the conversation for future replies”.
To reinforce this change in meaning, I’ll be blocking you now. Have a good rest of the day.
Remember when I said you weren’t up to the task?
Hit and run like a coward. You blocked me because you’re well aware that you’re unable to defend your position.
There are other people who have explained this to you already.
I often find – and such appears to be the case here – that when people make these arguments that they either do not know the difference between sex and gender, or are feigning ignorance.
Sex is not binary, and the “anti-trans” folks pretend that it is. Intersex people exist.
Gender is not solely biological.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender
All your premises are wrong. The existence of trans people doesn’t reject biology, quite the contrary, advanced biology supports the notion that sex can vary beyond a binary and is quite distinct from gender and sexual identity (which are psychosocial phenomena). There is no organized dogma on the LGBTQ+ support community. If anything, in fighting, disagreement and diversity is what defines it, not homogeneity or conformity. Our understanding of sexual identities, gender and transexuality is the result of scientific discourse, through and through. From phenomenological descriptions, to anthropological, sociological, psychological and biological study. Our theories and understanding of transexual individuals has changed radically as new evidence has come forth and discoveries and theories evolve around it. It is quite the opposite of dogma. On heresy, there’s only one thing that is considered universally bad, and is the idea that a group of people has to die due to something they can’t control and aren’t at fault for. Like declaring murder against trans people for being born transgender, yes, that’s a definitive faux pas and you will be ostracized for wanting minorities dead. This is a moral stance, but that’s it, it doesn’t imply adhesion to any organized enforcement of belief. There’s also no censorship or apostasy in here. The concept of censorship doesn’t apply as the FFRF is not a government. Coyne is perfectly allowed to publish his ideas somewhere else, just not there. Finally, apostasy doesn’t apply because this is not an organized religion.
The thing here is that Coyne and Dawkins want to declare themselves apostles of their anti-religion movement. Because that’s how they were raised and they lack the critical thinking skills to realize the irony of the situation they’re in. They are uncritically defending Anglican religious values and objectively acting against the anti-religion they claimed to champion. They’re exactly the kind of asshats they would’ve debated against 10 or 20 years ago.
censorship does not require a government and it does apply
was dawkins suggesting this in his opinion piece and if not then why remove it
People giving a biological stance against transgender women don’t even make sense because there are many supporting pieces of biological evidence which show that gender exists on a spectrum.
Indeed, a woman is whoever says they’re a woman, and it’s very likely that their choice is biologically driven. I know some people might not like a comment like this because it’s “trans med”, and I get the impulse to shoot down comments like this out of fear of being exclusionary, but if you really think about it this doesn’t exclude any known or unknown gender or identity.
He’s right, but religion is pretty natural for humans. Any kind of divorce between religion and core ideals of the society lasts only as long as the cultural movement behind that divorce doesn’t create its own religion. Because the majority of humans are not independent thinking and not rational, even if they are part of a crowd united by stated belief in independent thinking and rationalism.
That’s why ideologies can be divided into “creating a resilient structure of society, because apes will be apes” and “fixing the apes to be better humans”, and the latter kind always fails. Interestingly enough, this division is orthogonal both to right\left and to libertarian\authoritarian categories.
My point was - a person may identify as whatever they want, but they were, in the vast majority of cases, born clearly a man or clearly a woman.
I don’t think he’s against that identity. But to reject reality of nature because of self-identification and to try to impose that upon popular scientific discourses is a religion indeed, just sort of a protest against religious mainstream, not much different from East Roman iconoclasm or Jewish hassidic movements.
Or Christianity itself the way it conquered the old religions in the east Mediterranean, especially Egypt. Egyptian ancient religion from that age was very complex and well-canonized, and with apparently most people just as full of it as today of Christianity. While early Christianity in Egypt was a compact, simple and beautiful set of abstract beliefs ; in some sense Christianity of that time was less magical and allegorical than old religions, but at the same time claimed that its smaller miracles were true.