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Why is Richard Dawkins Grumpy?

Gil Dodgen
November 25, 2011
Intelligent Design
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Because the News item concerning Lynn Margulis will quickly scroll away on this forum, I offer the following.

Lynn Margulis is dead. Richard Dawkins (on whether she was a one-hit wonder and her obituary):

Yes, that is exactly what she was. She was right about one big thing – and not many people can say that, so she deserves credit for it. But she more than used that credit up being wrong, in a big way, about almost everything else. She bizarrely saw herself as anti-Darwinian, and bad-mouthed the entire neo-Darwinian synthesis and just about everybody associated with it. She once said, in my presence, “John Maynard Smith doesn’t understand evolution”. Fortunately she was not taken seriously enough for her net influence to be negative, but it’s a close-run thing. Sorry to sound grumpy about the dead, but this foolish obituary is enough to drive anyone to it.

My response to this esteemed “professor of science” — who purports to educate those of us involved in legitimate science and not Darwinian speculation and fantasies — is as follows:

Dear Professor Dawkins,

Why are you grumpy? Her [Lynn Margulis’s] chemistry shut down at death. She was nothing more than a bunch of chemistry that came about by natural selection and random variation.

She’s dead and has entered eternal oblivion just as you will one day. Her life was completely pointless and meaningless in the grand scheme of things, just as your life ultimately will be.

So, professor Dawkins, why not take your own advice?

THERE’S PROBABLY NO GOD. NOW STOP WORRYING AND ENJOY YOUR LIFE?

So why be grumpy? Or, is that how you enjoy your life?

Comments
If I remember correctly the "probably" was to placate the advertising standards people, because you can't prove God doesn't exist. Yes, yes, I know, awfully British. englishmaninistanbul
I have heard of this woman. It is sad she has died for herself and those who loved her or cared about her or wishfully everyone. Didn't read it but it seems she got a good obituary and Dawkins is complaining because in some way she was not usefull to evolutionary concepts or atheism. I understand she did a rare thing. Discovered/invented/figured out something of note. Well is not this usually the sign of a sharper thinking person. it would follow such a person would more likely be against , at least a bit, some of the evolutionary stuff. Another big point MR Dawkins is that she is a woman. The establishment and common opinion is desperate to see woman achieve in the smartness of science. This is a new thing for woman. This is a liberal thing. Don't break ranks to make points of little concern to the modern American establishment. Evolution needs their patronage since its intellectual foundations are under serious attack. Robert Byers
That 'THERE’S PROBABLY NO GOD' statement from Dawkins has always struck me as a type of 'boy whistling in the dark' statement. Something he did trying to placate his fears. Seeing that it is of a 100% logical certainty that God does exist, I would say his fears are well grounded, especially since he has made a career, and much money, cursing, and railing against, God he will certainly face when he dies. bornagain77

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