by Mack Ransom.
Originally published as “When Atheists Fight over Gender” at American Thinker.
Three scientists recently resigned from the Honorary Board of the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) after the organization decided to remove and apologize for publishing Jerry Coyne’s article, “Biology is not Bigotry.” Coyne’s piece rebutted an earlier post promoting a view that denies biological realities about sex and endorses a trans-sexual ideology. While I support the biological basis of Coyne’s arguments, his critique inadvertently highlights a deeper irony: his stance undermines his mission of “keeping religion out of government and social policies.”
How It Began
Kat Grant wrote an article, “What is a Woman?,” published on the “Freethought Now!” FFRF blog. The article is a showcase of flawed reasoning. At its core, Grant’s arguments hinge on the inaccurate assumption that manhood and womanhood can change. Grant tackles paper tiger arguments, such as claiming that if women with hysterectomies can’t get pregnant, the ability to conceive should not define womanhood. This is an exception that actually validates the fact that someone with ovaries is indeed a woman; a woman typically has the ability to conceive at some point, but changing that through surgery or other means does not change her womanhood. Grant uses flawed arguments such as this to dismiss biology as an insufficient framework for understanding gender, ultimately concluding that womanhood is detached from biological reality. This conclusion is both unconvincing and unsupported by Grant’s arguments.
Enter Coyne with a rebuttal grounded in biology.
A Biological Argument for the Definition of the Sexes
Coyne’s rebuttal article, “Biology is not Bigotry,” presented a clear and compelling case that sex is a biological reality that cannot be changed. He explains, “In biology, ‘sex’ is traditionally defined by the size and mobility of reproductive cells (‘gametes’). Males produce small, mobile gametes (sperm…), while females produce large, immobile gametes” (eggs). This description aligns well with my Sex Determination Decision Tree, which is available to instruct Grant and others. Coyne rightly asserts that we mammals cannot alter our gamete production mechanisms and therefore cannot change our sex. To identify as the sex that you can never become is the ideology of the imposter. Many who seek to find their true self in this corrupt ideology are actually robbed of their opportunity to embrace their real unaltered self.
Canceling Biology
The real story here in not the Coyne-versus-Grant debate, they’re operating on entirely different intellectual planes. Instead, the controversy lies in FFRF’s reaction to Coyne’s article. The organization removed the post from its “Freethought Now!” blog and issued an apology, claiming it did not reflect FFRF’s “values and principles.” This act of censorship not only silenced Coyne but also alienated like-minded contributors in their community. Coyne expressed his concern that the FFRF was drifting outside of their original mission, such that an organization that ostensibly exists to promote freedom from religion has begun to embrace a religion-like ideology, complete with its own dogma, heretics, and excommunication process. Rather than accept being silenced within his community, Coyne rightly resigned and aired his dissatisfaction with the issues infiltrating the FFRF.
Irony in the Mission
The irony here is profound. Coyne’s and FFRF’s shared mission, to “educate the public about non-theism and keep religion out of government and social policies,” suffers from the same issues Coyne criticizes. But here the problem isn’t mission drift. The problem is the original mission. Their ideal world would remove religious contexts, doctrines, and moral arguments from schools and government, which also favors the establishment of atheism (or non-theism) as a de facto state religion. While FFRF supporters may not view atheism as a religion, I and many others do. I imagine that Kat Grant does not identify her transexual ideology as a religion, but Coyne is making that analogy, if not that actual argument.
Coyne’s critique of Grant’s “transexual ideology” as a religion-like framework is apt. However, he fails to see the parallel between this critique and the broader implications of FFRF’s mission. The term “separation of church and state” is not found in the Constitution; that term is never used. The establishment clause of the Constitution reads, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” By seeking to exclude religious voices from public service, FFRF violates the very principles it claims to uphold.
The Fallout
Jerry Coyne, Steven Pinker, and Richard Dawkins—all prominent voices in the atheist community—resigned from FFRF’s Honorary Board in protest of this censorship. Their departure underscores a deeper issue: the suppression of free thought within a community that ostensibly champions it. I pray they will also appreciate the irony that their mission results in the silencing of religious individuals in their own communities, just as the FFRF silenced Coyne in his.
Leave a Reply