In defense of ontological naturalism

By Mathew Goldstein

Someone recently published this “story” (using the terminology of the web site) advocating for agnosticism and criticizing atheism on a web site I never heard of: “Sorry, but atheism doesn't automatically mean you believe and understand science”. They published my response “in defense of ontological atheism”. 

At first they rejected my story on the grounds that it did not align with the purpose of the selected community. The community categories assigned to the original story I responded to was identical to the assignments of my response, the human community with a science subcategory. Having recently published an argument that agnosticism is more consistent with science than atheism, they should be willing to publish a counter-argument that atheism is consistent with science. Maybe they changed their mind about rejecting my story after recognizing that the rejection was unfair.

For a more articulate, complete, and sophisticated defense of ontological naturalism see In Defense of Naturalism by Gregory W Dawes. Following is an excerpt:

At what conclusion, then, have I arrived? I have argued that we should make a clear distinction between the procedural demands of history and the sciences and their (provisional) commitment to natural explanations. Their procedural demand is nothing more than the requirement that claims be tested against a body of publicly-accessible evidence. While I have suggested that this procedural demand is non negotiable, I have argued that it is also uncontroversial. What is controversial is the metaphysical naturalism of history and the sciences, which excludes talk of divine agency. This naturalism, I have suggested, rests on the fact that historians and scientists operate with a working ontology, a sense of what kinds of entities are likely to exist. This is drawn from both common sense and the results of historical and scientific enquiry. This ontology is merely provisional, in the sense that it could be revised given appropriate evidence. But appropriate evidence is needed. Religious thinkers who fail to offer publicly testable evidence that their proposed theistic explanations are the most adequate explanations on offer have no reason to complain if the rest of us continue to ignore them.

The liberal misinformation bubble

 By Mathew Goldstein

I once believed that information dispensed from liberal sources and institutions is more accurate and reliable than the blatantly and frequently distorted and misleading information dispensed from conservative sources and institutions. I no longer believe that. Leftist oriented commentators are also a major source of systematically biased, one-sidedly selective, story telling, the shameless dissemination of misinformation, and as committed to using almost any opportunity to politicize almost everything as rightist oriented commentators. This article published in the Atlantic magazine aligns completely with my perspective:  THE LIBERAL MISINFORMATION BUBBLE ABOUT YOUTH GENDER MEDICINE.

For decades doctors have been prescribing puberty blockers to treat precocious puberty. To argue that therefore it is a double standard to not treat gender dysphoria with puberty blockers requires overlooking the substantial difference between short term use of puberty blockers to delay puberty and a longer term use to cancel puberty. From a biological perspective it should be self-evident that delaying early puberty is less likely to have long lasting negative health impacts than preventing puberty from progressing. Equal protection before the law is not a compelling argument for reaching a conclusion that puberty blockers must be prescribed to treat gender dysphoria for minors without better evidence of no harm.

Here is an excerpt from Colin Wright’s Substack “Reality’s Last Stand” about the University of Pennsylvania’s new ban on men participating in women’s sports that is worthy of being read and considered regarding the too frequently biased reactions embedded within supposedly objective journalist news reports:

These headlines aren’t just misleading; they’re false. Lia Thomas wasn’t barred from female sports for being “transgender”; he was barred for being a male. Any other male, whether he identified as transgender or not, would be barred for the same reason. Trans-identifying males remain fully eligible to compete in UPenn athletics—on the men’s team.

Instead of focusing on the women who benefit from the university’s course correction, the media has centered its attention on Thomas. Headlines have emphasized that Thomas was “stripped of titles,” and have largely overlooked the women whose titles were restored: Anna Kalandadze, Virginia Burns, and Kayla Fu, whose records in the 500-meter, 200-meter, and 100-meter freestyle, respectively, have now been reinstated.

Predictably, proponents for allowing males to compete in women’s sports have wasted no time distorting scientific evidence to denounce UPenn’s decision. Two CNN reporters, for instance, claimed that the idea “transgender athletes have an unfair advantage in sports” is “not what the research shows.” They pointed to a 2017 review, which claimed that there was “no direct and consistent research to suggest that [trans-identifying males] . . . have an athletic advantage in sport.” But that conclusion flowed largely from the lack of studies on the question—an issue driven less by uncertainty than by the assumption that the answer was self-evident. Since then, hard data have emerged confirming what anyone with functioning eyes already knew: that trans-identifying males’ use of testosterone-suppressing drugs and cross-sex hormones only moderately reduces, but comes nowhere close to eliminating, the performance gap between male and female athletes.

Detecting androgenization when it is relevant

 By Mathew Goldstein

Here is an animated video on how sex screening in sports would work to protect female competition. This is what should happen for all serious adult sports competition contexts where there is sufficient money to provide the needed funding. It is a simple, irrefutable, fact that people gain a set of physical advantages that have a significant degree of relevance for many sports competition contexts as a result of androgenization relative to people who have not undergone androgenization. Androgenization begins in the womb and continues through childhood but these advantages mostly manifest during puberty. Acknowledging that trans-women as a group are in some respects different from women who are not trans and that trans-men are collectively to some extent different from men who are not trans does not sanction invidious discrimination against trans people nor endorse any false, negative over-generalizations regarding trans people. 

Who cares if Libertarian Free Will is scientifically incoherent?

 By Mathew Goldstein

This is a one year old, over one hour, Centre for Inquiry Canada YouTube video of Julien Musolino, a cognitive scientist, public speaker and author who holds a dual appointment as a Full Professor in the Psychology Department and the Center for Cognitive Science at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, addressing the question Who cares if Libertarian Free Will is scientifically incoherent? Although this topic has been covered a number of times before, I like how he discusses this issue. He covers the relevant subtopics and I think this video merits more attention than it has received (so far it has attracted only 359 views). I execute long videos like this at 1.5x speed, you may want to do the same.

Comment on Cass Review supposedly being debunked

By Mathew Goldstein

Transgender related medicine and government lawmaking policy is engulfed in a cesspit of misinformation and bad arguments. Unfortunately, sources of misinformation on this topic include Friendly Atheist, Science-Based Medicine, Freedom From Religion Foundation, and other fellow secularists that we generally agree with and support. Where there is misinformation there is a concomitant need to discuss and clarify.

Recently, FFRF welcomed, then erased, a reasonable post on their internet forum explaining and defending the concept of animal and vascular plant biological sex by biologist Jerry Coyne “Biology is not Bigotry” in reaction to a post that concluded the proper definition of a women is anyone who declares themself to be a women. That initial post was retained. Professor emeritus Coyne then resigned as an Honorary Board member. Richard Dawkins and Richard Pinker then also resigned in solidarity. FFRF then dismissed the entire Honorary Board, presumably to avoid the risk of such board members expressing opinions on their forum that they will opt to remove. 

Some of the content of Coyne’s post sounds questionable. In particular, I am not convinced that trans women should be disqualified from being rape counselors for women or from working in women’s shelters as he asserted. Transgender women should not be disqualified from any employment opportunities that employs men. In the U.S. about 15% of rape counselors are men and about 10% of rape victims are male. I am not aware that the male rape counselors are restricted to having only male clients. According to ChatGPT “In organizations offering rape crises services, efforts are usually made to match survivors with counselors who best meet their preferences and needs….” If FFRF had removed those claims but otherwise retained the post, or if they had disputed those claims, instead of completely removing the post, which otherwise has merit, there may have been no recriminations. Jerry Coyne has subsequently acknowledged that trans women can have female clients, the remaining issue here for him is that potential clients be told that the counselor is transgender.

Hemant Mehta labeled the three people who resigned from the FFRF Honorary Board bigots and also claimed that the Cass Review had been debunked. He is wrong on both counts. 

There is a distinction between the biological definition of sex, rooted in the empirically verified phenomena that there are two different types of gametes, one smaller (male) and the other larger (female), that merge to instantiate a new animal or vascular plant and gender. Gender identity is probably shaped by a complex interaction of genetic, hormonal and social influences. Some, but not all, transgender activists appear to be loathe to acknowledge that gender identity and biological sex sometimes conflict. They mistakenly assume if there is a conflict then the validity of transgender identity becomes suspect. They then reject, and attack, the biological definition of sex. Religiously motivated opponents of transgender medical procedures also refuse to recognize a distinction between biological sex and gender, insisting the latter must always match the former, thus denying gender is a distinct cognitive trait. The result is activism that is counter-factual, inconsistent, and counter-productive on both sides. That is a tragic mistake.

So let’s start with a few basics: That there are exactly two different gametes does not defame the biological definition of sex as being bigoted. People who defend the biological definition of sex are not thereby exhibiting or promoting bigotry. Human gender dysphoria coexists with there being exactly two different types of gametes. Transgender medical procedures as treatments for gender dysphoria are fully compatible with there being exactly two types of gametes. The three secularist former FFRF Honorary Board members who recently resigned favor granting adults the freedom to undergo transgender medical procedures. A birth certificate identifies biological sex, it does not identify gender. Biological sex is, unsurprisingly, positively correlated with gender identity, yet biology is complex and can be messy. An insistence that there must be a one to one mapping from biological sex to gender identity is primarily about defending ideology, it is not about reality, and does not merit being taken seriously.

Birth certificates identify biological sex because infants do not have an identifiable gender. This is not a flip of the coin assignment that supports the circular definition of a woman as being anyone who claims to be a woman, it is an observation. The observation functions as a proxy, it is not 100% guaranteed to be correct 100% of the time, which is why it should always be legally correctable retroactively when it was wrong due to ambiguous or misleading-appearing genitals. Intersex is valid and should be supported in addition to male and female. Replacing biological sex with gender identity in a birth certificate is a category error and should not be allowed. That is a counter-productive mistake which corrupts the primary, and most reliable available, record of biological sex. Biological sex is meaningful and potentially useful information. A state ID and similar documents are more appropriate places to record gender (it is easy to set gender to F, M, or X on Maryland ID).

Both biological sex and gender identity matter. For humans biological sex is about the presence of testes or ovaries prior to birth, which is fixed and unchangeable, while gender identity is a cognitive/psychological trait that could change after birth. There is some neurobiological evidence for gender identity residing in the hypothalamus and, as such, it may be somewhat immutable.  Which one should take priority when there is a conflict depends on the context and potentially on other related factors such as puberty, hormones, functional genitals, chromosomes, various physical traits that have different probability distributions (usually as a result of puberty), etc. There are privacy, time, effort, and cost/benefit tradeoffs to take into account. This complexity should not be denied or ignored. Both transgender activists who deny the reality of the role of conflicting biological sex, and religious conservatives who deny the reality of the role of conflicting gender identity, cannot be trusted to advocate for realistic and ethical transgender policies.

For example, Hemant Mehta says “if simply saying you’re trans gives you a competitive advantage, it’s downright bizarre we haven’t seen trans athletes winning every women’s sport in which they can play.” Notice how centering the “simply saying you׳re trans” disregards the underlying complexity of the conflicting biological sex component that is a common trait among transgender people, as if biological sex has no role, while also falsely asserting that it suffices to demonstrate there is no competitive advantage for men merely by observing some top tier athletic women routinely beat some lower tier athletic men, all in one sentence. Here is a list of over 100 trans women winners. The numbers of trans women medal winners are increasing every year. 

There are multiple examples of men performing within mid-range when competing against other men who promptly win a medal for the first time after declaring themselves to be a women and qualifying to compete instead in the women’s division where they invariably rank higher than they did when they competed against men. Look on the internet at the female and male results for various athletic competitions that list the rank and performance numbers. Merge the male and female lists and recalculate the rankings. Here is my prediction: At least nine times out of ten, for the combined list the male rankings as a percentage of the total population will go up and the female rankings will go down. This is an almost inevitable result of redefining a woman (or a man) as any person who declares themself to be a woman (or a man), full stop, as if biological sex has no relevance at all, which is fictional nonsense in the sports competition context. Biology, like the universe more generally, is unfortunately amoral, it does not always operate in harmony with social justice criteria and our ability to change its operation is limited.

Testosterone during puberty results in taller heights, wider shoulders and longer arm-spans, narrower hips, larger bones and hearts, greater lung capacity, muscles that are easier to build and harder to lose with more resistant connective tissues, leaner body mass and higher levels of hemoglobin, the protein that carries oxygen within the blood. Post-puberty addition of testosterone will probably have some, but not all, of the same impacts. Post-puberty suppression of testosterone is slow to reverse the impact of male puberty and such post male puberty testosterone suppression cannot reverse many of the physical changes that advantage males in sports competition. So there is an asymmetry here that is relevant for policy in the sports competition context. And for perspective, the additional testosterone arguably merits being characterized as a little “toxic” because it may bear some responsibility for the tendencies of males overall to have a shorter lifespan, to be more prone to resorting to violence, and to be more likely to engage in criminal behavior than females. 

Hemant Mehta tends towards being a one-sided, pugilistic, partisan who starts with his conclusions, searches for any information that he can cite to argue in support of those conclusions, systematically and selectively tosses out the information that contradicts his preferred conclusion, and exhibits few scruples with regard to whether his arguments represent the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. He is a propagandist for particular conclusions regardless of whether or not the overall available evidence actually favors those conclusions. Having said that, it also needs to be said that his blog is a good source of current event information. His blog is a welcome presence, I just wish the commentary on some topics, or at least this topic, was more thoughtful and more balanced.

Regarding the Cass Review supposedly being “debunked”, I recommend reading all three parts of Jessie Singal’s thorough debunking of the attempted but failed debunking of the Cass Review: “Yale’s “Integrity Project” Is Spreading Misinformation About The Cass Review And Youth Gender Medicine: Part 3”. Please keep in mind that the controversy among the experts here is confined to the treatment of minors. Here is his conclusion (which I agree with):

Maybe I spent too much time on this, but “An Evidence-Based Critique of ‘The Cass Review’ on Gender-affirming Care for Adolescent Gender Dysphoria” is a calumnious 30-car pileup of scientific misinformation. It offers an ugly, remarkably messy case study on what happens when highly credentialed, trusted experts simply stop caring about the truth, when they let the pull of political righteousness guide them instead. Legitimate  disagreement is one thing, but a paper this flawed and this dishonest should leave a mark on any institution or scientist who promotes it. It’s really that bad. Yale Law School should be exceptionally careful about promoting the work of “The Integrity Project” going forward.

It does no good to cover up, deny, and try to censor inconvenient arguments by declaring people who advance such arguments to be bigots. Ditto for accusing people who dare to try to unselectively and impartially side with the facts, regardless of who the facts favors or disfavors, as being guilty of siding with the enemy which is then somehow translated, via a leap over logic, all the way into their actually being the enemy. Nor should adults be given a veto over critical responses to their favored arguments for merely asserting that such criticism harms them, as if they are entitled to being coddled like immature children who are incapable of accepting criticism.

We should be willing to acknowledge that while religion is ideology, it does not automatically follow that all of the more secular opponents of religiously motivated social conservatism are automatically reliable advocates for best fit with the overall available relevant evidence conclusions. That can be a complex and difficult goal to achieve. It has a dependency on debate from a broad range of different perspectives. When a damaging anti-intellectual narrowness, intolerance, and reliance on censorship prevails the result is that bad arguments, ignorance, and misinformation are protected and proliferate.

My speculation is that transgender practitioners are understandably afraid of liability lawsuits. We know too little to accurately identify who will benefit and who will not benefit from transgender treatments in advance. IMO, to try to protect themselves, transgender practitioners have adopted a “gender affirming care” mantra, under which they claim their responsibility is limited to treating whoever requests treatment, in part as a way of escaping responsibility for carefully diagnosing and skeptically evaluating their patients need for the transgender treatments. Holding practitioners responsible for vetting their patients before treating them is not a “double standard”. There is a significant risk that pursuing such a policy of avoiding responsibility for what happens to their patients can eventually back-fire on some practitioners. Practitioners confront difficult choices, they can potentially also be subject to lawsuits for refusing to provide requested treatments. 

It appears to be likely that not only will some people lose out and be harmed by the gender affirming care policy, particularly when the patients include troubled minors, but also that some troubled minors have already been harmed. Individuals who identify as trans sometimes have wider confounding issues related to identity confusion. There is substantial evidence that within the cohort of minors who express gender discomfort are minors who exhibit multiple psychological symptoms and it appears some of them have been transitioned. Nevertheless, the Science Based Medicine web site withdrew and disavowed a post by one of their regular female contributors that reviewed Abigail Shrier’s controversial book “Irreversible Damage”, which focused on this important topic, presumably after overwrought complaints by transgender activists. The book’s contents may have some weaknesses and flaws that should be highlighted and criticized accordingly, see this book review. She goes too far by rejecting gender identity as being separable from biological sex, yet her book still contributes to the broader debate and should have been respected for its contribution. Instead, the book and its author were demonized and shunned. As humanists we should be concerned for the welfare of those vulnerable minors, be committed to not demonizing, slandering, and “shutting down” people we disagree with, and not be equating activism with censorship.