Re: http://richarddawkins.net/articles/91-to-live-at-all-is-miracle-enough
Can’t quite agree with Dawkins.
Feeling lucky, like feeling happy, is a mental state. Nonexistent entities (and indeed existent but nonliving entities, like teapots) are neither lucky nor unlucky, nor happy nor unhappy. So how can an existent, living entity be luckier than they? It’s like saying I’m greener than F# Major, or that smells are more concave (sic) than abstract…
And, setting aside the euphoria, the lucky ones are the ones who didn’t end up in Auschwitz (except if their loved ones ended up in Auschwitz).
Lucky to be alive? If I take an average over all the sentient creatures alive on the planet today, I’d say most of them are not so lucky; the lucky ones are maybe the ones that eat rather than get eaten, but then the numbers are beginning to dwindle for Dawkins’s ecstatic numerology…
What’s left that can be said and makes any sense is just a rather banal tautology: When you’re having a good day, you’re having a good day… Enjoy it while it lasts (and don’t think too hard!).
As for Dawkins’s hopes of posthumous pleasure from the people who are still partaking of his prose in 2111 — ask him again how he’s feeling about that in 2111…
PS and whether you prefer sci or sci-fi is really down to a matter of taste…