Prominent Atheist Richard Dawkins stepped down from the board of the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) after the group became enamored with transgender ideology. Dawkins resigned after FFRF censored an article that pointed out sex is biological. The scientist blasted the organization for caving to the “hysterical squeals” of the woke mob.
FFTF canned the article and referred to its publication as a mistake. Jerry Coyne and Steven Pinker, resigned shortly before Dawkins did. According to the initial pair, the foundation is pushing an ideology with the “dogma, blasphemy, and heretics” of a religion. The controversy can be traced back to a piece published on FFRF’s Freethought Now! website.
Kat Grant wrote a piece called “What is a Woman?” This article argues that “a woman is whoever she says she is.” The next week Coyne wrote an article in response to Grant’s article called “Biology is not Bigotry. He argued that the definition of a woman is “based on gamete type.” There was a woke backlash to Coyne’s rebuttal, and the FFRF pulled his article and apologized for causing “distress” in platforming his argument.
The leaders of the organization released an embarrassing statement where they said “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 also went on to say that they regret it ever happened.
“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,” they concluded. When the article was taken down, Coyne slammed the organization for promoting a “quasi-religious ideology.”
He went on to say “That is a censorious behavior I cannot abide,” he wrote in an email, according to the publication. “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,” Coyne added, “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.” Pinker, a US-Canadian psychologist, also blasted the organization.
He announced along with his resignation that the FFRF is “no longer a defender of freedom from religion but the imposer of a new religion, complete with dogma, blasphemy, and heretics.” Dawkins chimed in and called the organization’s decision to publish Grant’s “silly and unscientific” article a “minor error in judgment,” however he slammed the removal of Coyne’s rebuttal as “an act of unseemly panic.’
“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,” Dawkins went on to say. FFRF said that she is “grateful” for the time Dawkins and Pinker spent on the board, but that the “difference in opinion probably made such a parting inevitable.”