Secularism is a religion (an anti-God religion). I’ve being saying that for years—it’s a worldview, a religious system used to interpret the world, and it’s a faith-based belief system. So I’m not surprised that famous evolutionary biologist Dr. Jerry Coyne (who is a very vocal critic of creation!) has separated from the atheistic Freedom From Religion Foundation due to their religious beliefs no longer matching his beliefs.
Coyne claims he joined FFRF—an extremely vocal anti-Christian group of atheists—because he “supported its work guarding the wall of separation between religion and government, educating the public about how to be moral without faith, and, most important, upholding science and rationality over dogma and superstition.”
Now, before we continue on, notice the inconsistencies in just that paragraph:
- Coyne isn’t really for a separation of religion and government: he’s for the separation of Christianity and government—he’s perfectly fine with his religion of secularism being the prevailing worldview in our government. That’s what he fought for with the FFRF!
- When he says, “to be moral without faith,” what does he mean? There is no consistent standard for morality apart from God and his Word. Morality becomes completely arbitrary without an ultimate foundation. From his evolutionary worldview, why be “moral”? Animals—and in his view, we are animals—aren’t “moral.” And what does “moral” even mean? Who decides?
- Does he really uphold “science and rationality” over “dogma and superstition”? Well, he dogmatically believes naturalism—that everything came from nothing due to the big bang, life arose from nonlife, and one kind of creature turned into another kind—even though these ideas all fly in the face of observational science. There’s nothing scientific or rational about these beliefs. It’s a story about the past, a fairy tale.
But Coyne is no longer with FFRF. He, along with Richard Dawkins and Steven Pinker, resigned from the advisory board because “the foundation has abandoned science.” In reference to a recent incident where FFRF removed his article “Biology is not bigotry” and issued an apology for the “distress” it may have caused to the LGBTQ+ community, he notes, “The woke care more about ‘progressive’ ideology than scientific facts.”
He goes on to say, “Like religious fundamentalists, proponents of these views have a fierce conviction that they’re morally correct and know what’s best for you and society. To disagree is to be immoral—sinful, you might say. In many ways, transgender ideology is no different from the religious dogma the FFRF was founded to oppose. 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’). . .”
Yes, the LGBTQ lobby and the FFRF are religious, extremely religious. And their religion is atheism and/or progressivism. But what Coyne refuses to recognize is he is religious too. His religion is atheism, but of a different kind than FFRF’s. That’s where the conflict between him and FFRF arises from: their religions no longer agree. And that’s not surprising as neither has an ultimate foundation for their thinking. All they have are their own opinions, interpretations of the natural world, or the consensus of the group.
With this in mind, it’s understandable why FFRF has opposed AiG and has bullied people into getting rid of Christian symbols from public places—it’s so they can impose their atheist religion on the culture!
We would agree with Coyne that all humans belong to one of two sexes: male or female. But we don’t argue this merely from biology. We begin with God’s Word, which tells us God created everything, and he clearly created human life as either male or female (Genesis 1:27). Because we are not self-made people, we don’t get to decide for ourselves what our identity is. God has already done that, and it is clearly reflected in our biology.
Coyne can’t get away from religion. We pray he will someday give up his false religion of atheism and believe God’s Word and the gospel message.
