“You can take the (wo)man out of the church, but you can’t take the church out of the (wo)man”.

Many of them are former fundamentalist theists – while they may claim to reject theism, they have no capacity to reject theistic thinking. A pretty good example of how neuroplasiticity can, and does, permanently deform cognitive processing. Both these organizations ceased to be relevant a long, long time ago. They are now the cartoon godlessness that xtian loons have peddled as parody in every respect.

“We must purge the intellectuals” – this hostility towards iconic figures is born of pure resentment and an inherent poison spread by any slave revolt – or “ressentiment” if you refer to Nietzsche’s original observations on this phenomenon. This nonsense is far from new – it has been grinding on for well over a decade and the players involved have been churning out a steady stream of spiteful bile consistently attacking anyone who deviates from the new orthodoxy as peddled by PZMyers, Rebecca Watson et al. This is a new heresy born of a new fundamentalism. Did you only just notice? If you want a good barf, lookup the “The Privilege Delusion” on Skepchick. It will celebrate its 10th birthday on June 5th.

You’re exactly right. The incident in mid-2019 at the Atheist Community of Austin concerning Steven Woodford (Rationality Rules), who had been a guest on The Atheist Experience, was pivotal in my growing out of the gender ideology cult, and wokeness in general. Tracie Harris, Jen Peeples and Claire Wuellner, among others, declared Woodford a hateful bigoted transphobe for a video about transgender athletes (which I now understand was an extremely mild critique), and they all left the organisation in protest. At the time Dillahunty tried to smooth this over with some blatantly disingenuous comments, making me think he didn’t agree. But as you say, he clearly won the battle over himself, and now hateful misogynist trans activists like Katie Montgomerie (who spends his time getting women banned from Twitter for promoting reality) are allowed to guest host on The Atheist Experience. Another ACA show, Secular Sexuality, is nothing but a mouthpiece for gender ideology in all its deranged forms.

I spent fifteen years listening to Dillahunty, Harris et al, and learned a lot of very useful information about logical fallacies and critical thinking from them, which I can now use against them and all of the atheist/skeptic individuals who’ve gone the same way: The hosts of The Scathing Atheist, Thomas Smith of Serious Inquiries Only (who has clearly gone completely insane), Creationist Cat’s Vadim Newquist, Hugo & Jake, Shannon Q, Seth Andrews, PZ Myers, Cognitive Dissonance, Rebecca Watson, Mr Atheist. All now crazy. The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe lies by omission in never mentioning gender ideology at all. Something utterly debunkable remains ignored by the most prominent skeptic podcast.

“he is from a religion background – and people from religious backgrounds who lose their faith, don’t always lose their fundamentalism.” – This is exactly what happened with an ex-Christian friend of mine, who is now in the gender cult. He instantly spurned twenty years of friendship when I gave the “wrong” answer to “Are trans women women?”

Gary, there have been several times when he seemed to lose it.

First off, he is from a religion background – and people from religious backgrounds who lose their faith, don’t always lose their fundamentalism.

During the Atheism+ nonsense, Matt tried to post a mildly critical comment (against whatever argument the blog writer was musing on) on an Atheism+ blog under a false name. The experiment failed, with Matt’s comment deleted pronto, and him kicking up a fuss about it, and the blog snapping back saying it was because he posting under a false name.

Then, years later he seemed content walking a fine line of parroting “woke” dogma, while keeping an open mind towards debate. So for example he hosted a debate on stage with Sam Harris, and even attended a Mythicist Milwaukee while some of the woke-whippers were calling everybody attending (Matt, Seth (who pulled out), Courtney Heard (Godless Mom, who seems to have rank the Kool Aid, sadly), and Steven) all manner of names, namely “Nazi”. Perhaps this pressure damaged him somewhat.

However, the major incident that seeded his decline was, predictably, over the trans issue. Matt initially came to the defence of a skeptic known as Rationality Rule (I think), who dared to express mild skepticism over the Woke definition of trans, sex, gender, and basic biology. This turned out to be a huge mistake, as his workmates at Atheist Experience and various “humanist” organisations turned on him with vicious predictability.

Anyway, some weeks/months after this, he has obviously gone through some sort of struggle session and has thrown all his rational thought away and re-appeared Body Snatcher like parroting the extreme trans dogma.

So, these incidents, plus the fact his wife (or former wife) was VERY woke and regressive, have put him back on the path of fundamentalist, the non religious type.