Richard Dawkins' faithful optimism has always bothered me. Even if our species is so special, how does that make us, the individuals, lucky? What good does it do us?
What good does it do you? Well, the atoms that are you are now eating, sleeping, farting and posting comments on HN.
That's pretty interesting, given that it's much more likely that they'd be undergoing nuclear fusion as part of a star, or clumped together as a planet or an asteroid.
Dawkins is pointing out how neat this is as a way to get people interested in science. As Feynman pointed out, it's neat to take the world from another point of view.
At some point Dawkins has to rationalize (or shall I say 'irrationalize', for a man so concerned with logic) away the consequences of his diehard belief in an evolutionary process explaining our existence...
So to Dawkins, being the pawn of a purposeless, intelligence-devoid, purely natural process -- slowing marching his way to death, only to be forgotten within a few centuries -- probably doesn't sit well with him.
For most people, they choose to ignore the reality that Evolution simply lays down the fact that one's existence is both purposeless and meaningless. Well, one does have a purpose - replicating their species.
Of course, the optimistic delusion starts when people start bullshitting about "doing good for humanity" and "living for the moment" and all sorts of other drivel that really just serves to help them ignore the bigger uncomfortable reality of how incredibly useless and meaningless they are on the timeline of the infinite.
That's pretty interesting, given that it's much more likely that they'd be undergoing nuclear fusion as part of a star, or clumped together as a planet or an asteroid.
Dawkins is pointing out how neat this is as a way to get people interested in science. As Feynman pointed out, it's neat to take the world from another point of view.