Recently, professional skeptic Michael Shermer felt compelled to protest, “Wokeness poisons science” and “I am no longer Woke.”

Wokeness appears to be poisoning atheism as well as science. Who better to find that out that University of Chicago evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne, anti-religious zealot and censor of anyone who questions the idea of a Godless universe.

At one time, atheists tended to be proud believers in their own rationality but now many seem happy to jettison all that in order to cement their status among the Woke.

That has come back to hit Coyne, who was a proud member of the Honorary Board of the Freedom From Religion Foundation (as he says here).

Our story begins with an article in FFRF’s house organ, Free Thought Now, “What is a woman?” by lawyer and political scientist Kat Grant, making the following points, among others:

Some people define a “woman” as someone with a vagina. This presents problems, as transgender women who receive bottom surgery have vaginas. So, then, perhaps it is someone born with a vagina? Well, what does that mean for intersex people, who are often given genital surgery at birth when their anatomy does not firmly meet criteria for a penis or vagina? It can’t be based on whether or not the person has a uterus, because not only does that present issues for intersex people, but also women who have hysterectomies. Even more issues arise if you attempt to define womanhood based on the ability to conceive children, or have a period, as it would also exclude women who have any number of medical conditions, or who have gone through menopause.

Maybe the issue is that there is simply too much potential variation in macrolevel anatomy. Instead, we should be looking at genetics. Does having two X chromosomes make you a woman? Or is it just that you do not possess a Y chromosome? Even more so, this approach to defining what a woman is does not work the moment that you remember intersex individuals exist. The chromosomal approach is also a deeply impractical one, as people can go their entire lives not knowing their chromosomal makeup.

… A woman is whoever she says she is. (November 7, 2024)

These and the other arguments offered hardly seem compelling in the face of the natural sex binary of the vast majority of humans who have ever lived. But in some environments, the power of an argument does not lie in its cogency at all but rather in the shared strong emotions of the adherents. And, as Coyne discovered, FFRF is one of those environments.

As a biologist, Coyne posted a response, “Biology is not bigotry,” which FFRF published with a cautionary disclaimer:

In the Freethought Now article “What is a woman?”, author Kat Grant struggles at length to define the word, rejecting one definition after another as flawed or incomplete. Grant finally settles on a definition based on self-identity: “A woman is whoever she says she is.” This of course is a tautology, and still leaves open the question of what a woman really is. And the remarkable redefinition of a term with a long biological history can be seen only as an attempt to force ideology onto nature. 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.”

Further, there are plenty of problems with the claim that self-identification maps directly onto empirical reality. You are not always fat if you feel fat (the problem with anorexia), not a horse if you feel you’re a horse (a class of people called “therians” psychologically identify as animals), and do not become Asian simply become you feel Asian (the issue of “transracialism”). But sex, Grant tells us, is different: It is the one biological feature of humans that can be changed solely by psychology. December 26, 2024 Also here.

By December 27, Coyne’s response had been removed from the FFRF site (the material linked above is from an internet archive). However, Colin Wright, one of a number of evolutionary biologists who were Canceled for insisting on the sex binary, republished the article on December 30 at Reality’s Last Stand.

And the Honorary Board?

Coyne, as of December 27, continued to support FFRF, stating “I intend to remain on the Honorary Board unless the FFRF boots me off, though I feel sad that they felt the need to decorate my essay with their very first disclaimer.”

But by December 28, reality began to sink in:

I emailed [co-founder] Annie Laurie inquiring what had happened to my piece. I never got a response—or rather, they didn’t have the human decency to write me back personally. They still have not done so, and now they shouldn’t bother. Instead, they sent out the following notice to all FFRF members (it’s also archived here):

The money shot:

Recently, we published a guest blog post as part of an effort to provide a forum for various voices within the framework of our mission. Although we included a disclaimer that the viewpoints expressed within the post were not necessarily reflective of the organization, it has wrongfully been perceived as such.

Despite our best efforts to champion reason and equality, we recognize mistakes can happen, and this incident is a reminder of the importance of constant reflection and growth. Publishing this post was an error of judgment, and we have decided to remove it as it does not reflect our values or principles. We regret any distress caused by this post and are committed to ensuring it doesn’t happen again.

“Freedom From Religion Foundation supports LGBTQIA-plus rights,” (December 27, 2024)

Since then, Richard Dawkins and Steven Pinker have resigned from the Honorary Board, along with Coyne himself, despite his initial hopes. In his letter to the executive, he writes, “This was in fact the third time that I and others have tried to warn the FFRF about the dangers of expanding its mission into political territory. But it is now clear that this is exactly what you intend to do. Our efforts have been fruitless, and if there are bad consequences I don’t want to be connected with them.”

Why did atheist activism collapse in the face of Woke ideology?

As the depth of the rejection was beginning to sink in (December 28), Coyne wrote,

But it’s the last six paragraphs of the FFRF’s post where they explain why they took down my piece. It is because it caused “distress” and “did not reflect [the FFRF’s] values or principles.” I’m not sure what values or principles my piece failed to reflect. Does the FFRF think that sex is really a spectrum, that there are more than two sexes in humans, or that the most useful definition of biological sex doesn’t involve gamete size? I don’t know, nor do they say.

As for my words causing “distress,” well, I’m sorry if people feel distress when I explicate the biological definition of sex or estimate how few people fail to adhere to the sex binary. But this is all material not for censorship but for back-and-forth discussion, especially on a site called “Freethought Now!” (Should it be called “Freeethought Not!” instead?)

“The FFRF removed my piece on the biological definition of “woman”

This response mainly shows that Coyne still doesn’t know what he is up against. Woke is, at bottom, a war on reality. It is a war on math. And a war on science. That includes a war on biology, of course.

One of the key Woke weapons is the claim that statements about reality are harmful because they support an oppressive power structure and cause “distress,” as above. Thus, talking around reality is justified. The Freedom From Religion Foundation has clearly decided to sign on to that in order to preserve adherents’ feelings.

What about the traditional atheist war on religion?

Woke is a war on religion too. But that’s mainly if the religion adheres to and encourages rational thinking, founds hospitals and universities, and such. See John West’s upcoming book Stockholm Syndrome, for more on the newer approaches to religion, with which the Woke can get on better.

In short, a Woke atheist group that values feelings over facts can certainly continue to bash religion. It just can’t pretend to any intellectual integrity while doing so.