reading room
The Rationalist's Shadow
A Lament for Richard Dawkins
He showed us how the gene might speak, its selfish whisper, cold and sleek. He stripped the myth from sacred law with reason's blade and skeptic's awe.
He lit the minds of searching youth, a priest of logic, proof, and truth. He taught us how to doubt belief— to search for cause in fact, not grief.
But reason, too, can lose its way, when pride refuses light of day. The path that once was sharp and straight now wind through bitterness and hate.
He clasped the binary in biology: sex defined by gamete ontology— "truly binary" he declared, as if the rest need not be spared.
He questioned how one might be trans, then linked it to transracial plans— a parallel some find sincere, but one he used to mock, not hear.
His medal stripped, his praises hushed, by those whose hopes he once had brushed. The humanism he professed now falters where it's needed best.
For once he soared on reason's wing— now clipped, he joins the echoing of voices cold to human plight, who wield the facts but not the light.
He rails at "gender self-assigned," as if the soul were ill-defined. He grants the pronounces, "courtesy"— but not from faith in dignity.
O Dawkins, how your truths once burned, but now we drive how little you've learned. For what is reason, sharp and bare, if it forgets the weight of care?
Truth isn't just what can be shown through microscope or chart alone. It's also how we choose to be— with minds precise, and hearts set free.
— Lilith