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British outlet The Telegraph reported that the Freedom From Religion Foundation pulled the article "Biology is not Bigotry" from its site following backlash from pro-trans individuals. In turn, Dawkins resigned.

In his resignation letter to the foundation, Dawkins called the removal of the piece "an act of unseemly panic" and accused the foundation of having "caved in to hysterical squeals from predictable quarters and retrospectively censored that excellent rebuttal."

Biologist and fellow FFRF member Jerry Coyne composed the "censored" article as a rebuttal to non-binary author and FFRF fellow Kat Grant’s November article titled, "What is a Woman?"

The biologist’s piece argued that "any attempt to define womanhood on biological terms is inadequate."

Coyne’s follow-up challenged Grant’s point directly, arguing "the biological definition of ‘woman’" is based on gamete type.

Shortly after FFRF published Coyne’s piece, board co-presidents Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor unpublished it and released a statement explaining their decision.

"Publishing this post was an error of judgment, and we have decided to remove it as it does not reflect our values and principles. We regret any distress caused by this post and are committed to ensuring it doesn’t happen again," they wrote.

Following the move, both Coyne and US-Canadian psychologist Prof. Steven Pinker resigned from the foundation. Pinker blasted the group, saying it’s "no longer a defender of freedom from religion but the imposer of a new religion, complete with dogma, blasphemy, and heretics."

In an email to FFRF leadership, Coyne wrote, "That is a censorious behavior I cannot abide. I was simply promoting a biological rather than a psychological definition of sex, and I do not understand why you would consider that ‘distressing’ and also an attempt to hurt LGBTQIA+ people, which I would never do."

He added, "The gender ideology which caused you to take down my article is itself quasi-religious, having many aspects of religions and cults, including dogma, blasphemy, belief in what is palpably untrue (‘a woman is whoever she says she is’), apostasy, and a tendency to ignore science when it contradicts a preferred ideology."

https://www.yahoo.com/news/richard-dawkins-leaves-atheist-foundation-185849168.html

After more than a year of pro-Palestinians telling Jews that their historical and biblical links to Israel were irrelevant (in an attempt to delegitimise the Jewish state) it turns out that historical and biblical links really are important, so long as they don’t involve Jews. Now Jesus is Palestinian, the theory goes, it’s completely fine to argue that “some” of those who inhabited the region 2,000 years ago do have a claim on the land after all. Placards at marches read “Jesus is Palestinian” or “Jesus, the most famous Palestinian”.

There is, of course, a deeper precedent for this, in that Jesus’ Jewishness has been played down since the third century, when “Christianity” proliferated into Roman society. Then, even more so when his death became an excuse for anti-Semitism in the Middle Ages. In that sense, this attempt to politicize him is nothing new. There was also a certain German group you may have heard of from the 1930s and 40s who were very keen to eliminate any link between Jesus and his Jewish identity. It’s in this long, troubled context that we should see the potential harm this idea possesses.

If you leave aside the theological and historical absurdity – equating a Jewish man from 2000 years ago with a political identity that didn’t exist – this is the nub of the problem. It promotes the idea that Jews are systematic baby killers. This is the sort of thing that is screamed at elderly people on the streets of London, Glasgow and Brighton. That’s not something Jesus would have approved of. He was Jewish, after all.

—George Chesteron (English writer, UK Telegraph, Senior Writer, noted for his stand against Anti-Semitism, and correcting the use of History against the Jews and Israel).

And when we come to the question of origins, the lips of science are tightly sealed. Science can’t explain the origin of either matter or life. We have merely substituted new words to cover our ignorance and pretend we’ve made an advance. As far as ultimate reality is concerned, however, we are still where primitive man was before “science” deluded us with false hope.

[Humanity has often put forth the idea that our current generation is far more intelligent than those of previous centuries. Yet, it seems that with every new discovery of something done by ancient man, it is greeted with comments such as, “We can’t even figure out how ancient people did a lot of the brilliant things they did, such as the Egyptians building the pyramids, and other monumental architecture scattered around the world.” And that’s not the end of the search to answer the “how” of what was accomplished without power equipment equal to the task.]

Human intelligence 'peaked thousands of years ago and we've been on an intellectual and emotional decline ever since'

Is the human species doomed to intellectual decline? Will our intelligence ebb away in centuries to come leaving our descendants incapable of using the technology their ancestors invented? In short: will Homo be left without his sapiens?

This is the controversial hypothesis of a leading geneticist who believes that the immense capacity of the human brain to learn new tricks is under attack from an array of genetic mutations that have accumulated since people started living in cities a few thousand years ago.

Professor Gerald Crabtree, who heads a genetics laboratory at Stanford University in California, has put forward the iconoclastic idea that rather than getting cleverer, human intelligence peaked several thousand years ago and from then on there has been a slow decline in our intellectual and emotional abilities.

Although we are now surrounded by the technological and medical benefits of a scientific revolution, these have masked an underlying decline in brain power which is set to continue into the future leading to the ultimate dumbing-down of the human species, Professor Crabtree said.

His argument is based on the fact that for more than 99 per cent of human evolutionary history, we have lived as hunter-gatherer communities surviving on our wits, leading to big-brained humans. Since the invention of agriculture and cities, however, natural selection on our intellect has effective stopped and mutations have accumulated in the critical “intelligence” genes.

“I would wager that if an average citizen from Athens of 1000BC were to appear suddenly among us, he or she would be among the brightest and most intellectually alive of our colleagues and companions, with a good memory, a broad range of ideas and a clear-sighted view of important issues,” Professor Crabtree says in a provocative paper published in the journal Trends in Genetics.

“Furthermore, I would guess that he or she would be among the most emotionally stable of our friends and colleagues. I would also make this wager for the ancient inhabitants of Africa, Asia, India or the Americas, of perhaps 2,000 to 6,000 years ago,” Professor Crabtree says.

“The basis for my wager comes from new developments in genetics, anthropology, and neurobiology that make a clear prediction that our intellectual and emotional abilities are genetically surprisingly fragile,” he says.

https://creation.com/why-christianity-not-atheism-is-the-only-rational-foundation-for-ethics

[TBC: It is instructive that Crabtree’s “wager” on those of “2,000 to 6,000 years ago” comes comfortably close to Scripture’s dating.]

In fact, the “spontaneous arising by chance of the first heredity molecule” is not just improbable but impossible. This is one of those ingredients lying in wait in the impassable swamps and impossible cliffs that must be conquered before even reaching the base of Mount Improbable. Evolutionists/atheists are now telling us that the law of biogenesis isn’t really a law. It has been violated not just once but millions of times all over the universe! To accept Darwinism is tantamount to rejecting the very foundations of science itself. Everything is up for grabs.

Nor can we be impressed with the reasons [Dawkins] has since accumulated in the name of science and offers to us now. Concerning the all-important question of the origin of life, he says,

“The major ingredient was heredity, either DNA or (more probably) something that copies like DNA but less accurately, perhaps the related molecule RNA. Once the vital ingredient—some kind of genetic molecule—is in place, true Darwinian natural selection can follow, and complex life emerges as the eventual consequence. But the spontaneous arising by chance of the first heredity molecule strikes many as improbable. Maybe it is—very, very improbable. . . . The origin of life is a flourishing, if speculative, subject for research. The expertise required for it is chemistry and it is not mine. [Emphasis added]”

A critic of the article “How to build a bomb in the public school stem” argued that a biblical foundation was unnecessary for ethics. Jonathan Sarfati’s response explains how Christian foundations underpin the prosperity and science of the West, and contrasts these with the atrocities of atheistic regimes. This needs to be revisited especially with the increasingly shrill atheistic attacks on Christianity in general and on Christian freedoms, pushing moral boundaries, and even a leading atheistic evolutionist saying that Hitler’s ideas should be reconsidered. Then the response explains the real problem for atheists trying to build an ethical system.

 “How to Build a Bomb.” You wrote that in order to create an explosive child all that was required was to educate that child to believe that we evolved from animals, life is an accident and that there are no absolutes.

“That belief system which is indoctrinated into kids provides the perfect basis for this.

“Well, I and many, many other people like me believe exactly those things, reaching our conclusions through trial and error and by asking questions of ourselves and the world we live in and not shying away from the answers whatever they appeared to be or mean. In doing so we feel we have a wider more stable foundation with which to tackle the problems of today’s MODERN society and MODERN man’s need for a combination of tangible truth and spiritual peace, two quarters in which the ancient indoctrination of organized religion has consistently failed to provide.”

Actually, biblical Christianity has provided the only basis for prosperous modern democracies, including:

• The rule of law, which binds all people, recognizing a higher source of the law. The alternative is rule by despots.
• Equality of all people under the law, neither favoring the rich nor the poor (Job 34:19).
• Property rights, presupposed in the command against theft (Exodus 20:15). Without them, the capital cannot be used as capital for investment loans, and there is no protection for what people have earned by productive work. Indeed, Hernando de Soto’s book The Mystery of Capital shows that if private property in poor countries were freed up from statist ownership, this would provide 90 times more wealth than all the foreign aid to all Third World countries over the past three decades.
• All these are biblical principles, and it is no accident that the most prosperous countries have adopted them, and that the poorest countries fail. Even now, prosperous countries in the west are still benefiting from these Christian-based foundations laid down in their past.
• Conversely, atheism has been tried as a basis for life in many countries in the 20th century. The results have been some of the biggest bloodbaths of all time under communist despots above the law, e.g., Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot. For example, the Inquisition killed 2000 people in three centuries; Stalin killed that many before breakfast. Neither could atheistic economies remotely compete with the West—e.g., it didn’t take long for the USA to outstrip the USSR in the space race when they put their minds to it.

[An atheist noted] “In short I am, to you, a walking time bomb. I am, in actual fact, a diligent, hardworking, caring, stable, compassionate, intelligent, kind, thoughtful and considerate individual…”

[And nice to your mother too, I’ve heard.]

“(as are many, many of my likeminded friends all around the world) we manage to live the lives your religion postulates without the need for the pomp and scripture, the fear and hatred and the presence of any kind of omnipresent deity to keep us in check. I wondered how you would explain this?”

Nothing to explain. The article explained that evolution provides the basis for the bomb-building, not that everyone would act consistently on this basis. We know that many atheists borrow a moral code from outside their belief system, since that can’t provide any. The rabid misotheist Richard Dawkins even claimed that he was a passionate Darwinist as to how we got here, but a passionate anti-Darwinist when it came to morality.

Rather, our argument is not that atheists cannot live ‘good’ lives, but that there is no objective basis for their goodness if we are just rearranged pond scum.

[For the full text of this article, please see:]

https://creation.com/why-christianity-not-atheism-is-the-only-rational-foundation-for-ethics

Most of our readers are at least aware of the problems that result from doctrinal heresy, but few are aware or have thought about relational heresy or even know what it might be. Almost 20 years ago, our friend and associate, Rich Poll from Apologia Report contributed the article, "The Ambush of Discernment." He deals with many of the aspects of discernment that can derail those involved due to false expectations, workload, and other things including our attitude toward others. In other words, our relationships. Bob from RPM Ministries just posted the article, "Beware of Relational Heresy While Addressing Perceived Doctrinal Heresy." The issue is an important one. A pastor and good friend, Fred Greening the mean-spiritedness which seemed to be part and parcel of those who engaged in apologetics/discernment ministry until he met Joy and me. He began talking about the issues of mindless evangelism and heartless apologetics:

We talk a lot about doctrinal heresy—and it is a vital issues that we must address.

Orthodoxy—right belief—is essential.

We seem to talk less about relational heresy.

Orthopraxy—right relationships, right living—is equally essential.

We talk even less about right relationships while talking about right doctrine. Our failure to address this runs counter to God’s all-sufficient Word. The Bible is replete with commands about how we treat one another while we address doctrinal disagreements. The Bible consistently commands us to guard our hearts against relational heresy.

The point in the article is that there seems to be an underlying assumption that it is normative for churches to talk about "Orthodoxy—right belief—is essential." Sadly, it isn't so. All we have to do is look around at how many churches embrace the occultism of the Enneagram, the New Apostolic Reformation, or Bill Gothard's teaching, to name but a few examples. In those settings, there seems to be the idea that niceness is the closest thing to godliness, and pointing out false doctrine is viewed as decidedly not nice and, therefore, ungodly. However, that being said, the article is an important one. There is a great deal in Scripture about defending the faith, exposing false doctrines, and teaching the essentials, and there is a great deal about our hearts and how we treat others in the process. Our goal is not to win arguments but to win over those in error.

https://mailchi.mp/36941ce94c68/the-gift?e=169825fd77

Richard Dawkins has not explained anything, let alone how life began. This seems odd in view of the fact that he declares a number of times that Darwin explained everything about life. Isn’t this how Dawkins says he was converted to the religion of atheism? Let me quote him again: “My final vestige of religious faith disappeared when I finally understood the Darwinian explanation for life.”6 But he has also told us, as have the other leaders of the New Atheists, that Darwinism doesn’t explain the origin of life after all, so there was really no sound reason for his conversion to atheism! That should be more than a little disconcerting.

I don’t know whether the growing lack of clarity in many evangelical quarters about the person and work of Jesus Christ is due to outside influences or internal weaknesses. Perhaps it is a bit of both. But it is shocking to me how many new evangelical ideas are uncanny in their resemblance to the Adventism I grew up with. For me, a personal example is that of David M. Moffitt’s recent book Rethinking the Atonement. It features a foreword by N. T. Wright and aims to move past beyond traditional views of the atonement that the author considers to be “reductive.”

One essay in this book is distressingly titled “It Is Not Finished: Jesus’s Perpetual Atoning Work as the Heavenly High Priest in Hebrews.” Though Moffitt does not come from an Adventist background, his proposed revision of the biblical doctrine of Christ’s atonement has features which are deeply disquieting to me. The author attempts to pit Christ’s cry on the cross “It is finished!” (John:19:3And said, Hail, King of the Jews! and they smote him with their hands.
See All...) against a revisionist understanding of Hebrews which argues that Jesus’ ongoing “high-priestly intercession” indicates “some kind of ongoing work of sacrificial atonement.”

In fact, I found out recently that [Seventh day Adventist] Roy Gane has publicly stated that his writings on atonement have partly been the basis for Moffitt’s new thinking about the epistle to the Hebrews. Indeed, Gane cites Moffitt’s Rethinking the Atonement as an example of a new work in evangelical scholarship that is much closer to the Adventist position. The two-phase atonement, an Adventist innovation that robs Christ of his rightful glory and robs Christians of their assurance of salvation, is slowly working its way into the evangelical consciousness.

—Kaspars Ozolins (Former Adventist, born in Latvia to an Adventist family, Assistant Professor of Old Testament Interpretation, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary)