So even atheists kick out heretics?

Just a few years ago we were all told that Christians had better look out because a new generation of invigorated atheists was arriving on the scene, flush with scientific fervor and bestselling books. These new atheists, as they styled themselves, claimed that scientific objectivity, hard-core biology, and evolutionary materialism would sweep belief in God right out the door. Faith is faith but facts are facts, they said.

One of the most aggressive of the atheist scientists was Jerry Coyne, professor emeritus in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago. He even wrote a book entitled Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible. Coyne declared war on theism and, true to his worldview, among other things he denied that morality has any objective basis even as he insisted that biology does. In other words, there are no moral facts, and no theological facts, only biological facts.

Coyne was so admired by the atheist community that the secularist Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) presented him with the “The Emperor Has No Clothes Award” in 2011. Well, guess who’s naked now?

Coyne, along with fellow famous atheist scientists Richard Dawkins and Steven Pinker, have resigned in protest from the FFRF advisory board. Why? The bottom-line issue is that Coyne and his colleagues actually believe in the objective reality of male and female. It turns out that the atheists aren’t so sure.

It all goes back to November of last year and an article that appeared on a FFRF website by a writer named Kat Grant, who asked the question “Who is a woman?” and answered it with “A woman is whoever she says she is.” It was clearly an argument for transgender or non-binary gender identity, and Coyne was outraged.

He responded to Kat Grant in an article of his own. Facts are facts, remember. Coyne is a prominent evolutionary biologist, and it’s no fun being an evolutionary biologist if you don’t know how to define male and female. Getting that wrong runs directly against the whole point of evolution. These guys believe in objective truth in biology, keep in mind, and that comes down to genetic structure, gametes, and all that stuff. The absolute truth of biology, Coyne insisted, is resolutely clear about the reality of male and female as objective categories. Amazingly enough, Jerry Coyne and President Donald Trump share a basic definition of male and female. Who knew?

The male produces the small reproductive cell and the female produces the large reproductive cell, and that’s the end of it, they say. It doesn’t change. In Coyne’s words, “Feelings don’t create reality.” Wow. Those are fighting words these days.

After protest from LGBTQ activists, the FFRF took down Coyne’s article arguing for a biological definition of woman. It just disappeared. Coyne was outraged and resigned from the FFRF board of advisors. Dawkins and Pinker soon did the same. Dawkins, long associated with Oxford University, is perhaps the most famous of the so-called “new atheists.” He has gotten himself in some of the same hot water. It turns out he, as well as Coyne, is pretty sure he knows what a female is.

The outrage of these scientists is that the FFRF turns out to be a lot less committed to reality than they had thought. The foundation claimed to be building a big movement of atheists, scientists, and activists committed to secularism. After affirming abortion, assisted death, and other orthodoxies, the FFRF claims to be “an umbrella for those who are free from religion and are committed to the cherished principle of separation of state and church.”

It turns out that umbrella isn’t big enough for biological reality. Coyne, Dawkins, and Pinker are out. Coyne took to the opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal in recent days to declare that “biology is not bigotry.” He went after the FFRF and its advisory board and especially after “transgender ideology” with outrage: “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”).

Furthermore, “It also makes anathema of heresy and blasphemy (tarring of dissenters as ‘transphobes’), attempts to silence critics who raise valid counter arguments, seeks to proselytize children in schools and excommunicates critics.”

Make no mistake. Jerry Coyne insists that he is fully committed to atheism. His claim is that the FFRF has traded scientific atheism for ideological group-think. He also had the temerity to point out that the transgender revolution is incompatible with biological reality. When it comes to the gender ideologies and the new idols of the age, Coyne concludes that he is “proud to proclaim myself a heretic.” Sadly, when it comes to Christianity, Coyne is just as much a heretic, but with infinitely more at stake. We can only hope that his affirmation of biological reality will be extended to theological reality. For that we can hope … and pray.