Freedom from Religion Foundation adopts ‘the very orthodoxy’ it was created to fight
The well-known critics of all things religious, especially anything connected to Christianity, at the Freedom from Religion Foundation now are being accused of adopting the very ideology the group was created to fight.
It is because the organization censored from its website an article from Jerry Coyne, professor emeritus of ecology in Chicago, an atheist and a board member.
Coyne wrote “Biology is not bigotry” to critique an early column promoting transgenderism.
Coyne’s response was to point out to the FFRF, “The gender ideology which caused you take down my article is itself quasi-religious, having many aspects of religious and cults, including dogma, blasphemy, belief in what is palpably untrue (‘a women is whoever she says she is’), apostasy, and a tendence to ignore science when it contradicts a preferred ideology.”
Constitutional expert Jonathan Turley, the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University, has written about such contradictions in his book, “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”
And he said the censorship agenda at the FFRF came from “transgender activists” over Coyne’s simple explanation that human sex is “binary” and his work to separate the science from the “politics” of the transgender ideology, which has been promoted widely by Joe Biden.
His criticisms took aim at Kat Grant’s earlier claim that “A woman is whoever she says she is.”
Turley explained, “Coyne offered a view shared by many that ‘[i]n biology … a woman can be simply defined in four words: ‘An adult human female.’…Because some nonbinary people — or men who identify as women (‘transwomen’) — feel that their identity is not adequately recognized by biology, they choose to impose ideology onto biology and concoct a new definition of ‘woman.” While Coyne supports equal rights for transgender people, he argued that, as a scientist, ‘feelings don’t create reality.'”
One result was the resignations of biologist Richard Dawkins and Harvard Professor Steven Pinker in support of Coyne, Turley noted.
Even so, FFRF “caved into the pressure” and removed Coyne’s comments.
The essay now is appearing on “Reality’s Last Stand.”
In Pinker’s resignation note, he charged, the foundation “is no longer a defender of freedom from religion but the imposer of a new religion, complete with dogma, blasphemy, and heretics.”
Turley wrote, “The intolerance for opposing views is so great that the FFRF is willing to engage in atheist orthodoxy, which not long ago would have been viewed as a contradiction in terms. It is a disgraceful position for a group that once defended those banned or canceled for their views. It is a moment that reminds one of what Robert Oppenheimer said about physicists, but it is particularly poignant for these atheists who have joined a mob to silence: they ‘have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose.'”