A very nice piece by Sarah Haider. In retrospect, organized atheism was a fundamentally silly idea, like organized round-Eartherism. newsletter.sarahhaider.com/p/atheism-wi... - ThreadSky

wkcosmo.bsky.social • 58 days ago

A very nice piece by Sarah Haider. In retrospect, organized atheism was a fundamentally silly idea, like organized round-Eartherism.

https://newsletter.sarahhaider.com/p/atheism-without-reason

Comments

wanderingincode.bsky.social•58 days ago

Interesting to see some atheists who dive head first into the concept that gender is not just a social construct but some kind of moral absolutism defined by "nature". Old mental models fully recycled.

wkcosmo.bsky.social•58 days ago

Absolutely nobody that I am aware of is making this contention.

wanderingincode.bsky.social•58 days ago

They are waving their arms wildly that they are only talking about biological definitions while insisting their conclusions be applied to those of gender. Just substituting biological absolutism for moral absolutism.

wkcosmo.bsky.social•58 days ago

You must be reading a different article than me.

wanderingincode.bsky.social•58 days ago

Did you read Coyne's piece?

brenorbrophy.com•58 days ago

It is so sad that trans people got sucked into this dumb culture war. They are real people, all they ask is to live their own true lives. All 'woke' means is don't be an asshole. If someone wants to live their life differently and it hurts no one, then respect that and leave them be.

wanderingincode.bsky.social•58 days ago

For a fun game, count the occurrences of 'woke' and 'woke mind virus' in the comments

wkcosmo.bsky.social•58 days ago

Absolutely nobody in this discussion is contending otherwise.

brenorbrophy.com•58 days ago

Maybe, but the author uses the term, "the simple biological fact that there are two sexes". It's not simple, sometimes brains disagree with bodies, it's complicated. Terms like this are used to pass discriminatory bathroom laws and deny kids & parents medical choices. Language has real consequences.

wkcosmo.bsky.social•58 days ago

The sole criterion for truth in science is whether or not a hypothesis is supported by evidence, not whether or not it will lead to a politically undesirable outcome.

brenorbrophy.com•58 days ago

Well, the evidence suggests that gender is complicated on many levels, sociological, psychological, biological and even physiological. Answers, especially in science, are rarely black and white.

wkcosmo.bsky.social•58 days ago

Gender, yes.

mkoivurova.bsky.social•57 days ago

That text by Haider was rubbish, simple mud flinging. Coyne had a point, but he was talkin about biological sex (and crime, which was probably the reason it was taken down).

Grant was talking about sex and gender as a wider concept. No serious person could object to Grant's original piece.

chain-reaction.bsky.social•57 days ago

The FFRF had legitimate goals, nothing silly about that.
The problem is that the foundation drifted from its original scope.
The bizarre idea in the article that faith can be helpful to keep a grounding in reality is a sign of true desperation

wkcosmo.bsky.social•58 days ago

A link to the piece by biologist Jerry Coyne, which would be entirely unobjectionable to any reasonable person, but was still taken down.

https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2024/12/28/the-ffrf-removed-my-piece-on-the-biological-definition-of-woman/

aph13.bsky.social•58 days ago

I think I'm reasonable, with the usual caveat that no one can be sure, but I object. The problem here is that the argument is not about biological reality but the definition of a word. And it's a word that different people use in different ways.

wanderingincode.bsky.social•58 days ago

Even the argument about bio reality is clearly nonsensical. There's always focus on gametes defining biological sex but no focus on the consequences. If one is born with XX gametes but has had the outward appearance of a male since birth and it is later found, should they be forced to transition?

aph13.bsky.social•58 days ago

Definitions are contested, and any argument which consists of people insisting that their preferred definition is the only correct one is unlikely to be fruitful.

voceofreason.bsky.social•58 days ago

By this logic you can define anything as anything, and all words lose all meaning.
Everybody on earth knows what a woman is, even the people that pretend not to. We were all born from one.

wanderingincode.bsky.social•58 days ago

Crazy, imagine if all the words and concepts we use were just completely made up.

wkcosmo.bsky.social•58 days ago

Yes, but they refer to an underlying reality that is not made up.

aph13.bsky.social•58 days ago

Insisting that your definition is the only possible one, because "everyone knows." But some people disagree, and that disagreement is a matter of fact.

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