Why are you sad about people expressing a superstition ?
The same could be said of many people, including Karl Marx.
Not by "all accounts"! In fact, he's was accused of intellectual dishonesty -- lying -- by more than one scientist.
John Tooby and Leda Cosmides Center for Evolutionary Psychology, UCSB July 7, 1997
Letter to the Editor of The New York Review of Books on Stephen Jay Gould's "Darwinian Fundamentalism" (June 12, 1997) and "Evolution: The Pleasures of Pluralism" (June 26, 1997)
John Maynard Smith, one of the world's leading evolutionary biologists, recently summarized in the NYRB the sharply conflicting assessments of Stephen Jay Gould: "Because of the excellence of his essays, he has come to be seen by non-biologists as the preeminent evolutionary theorist. In contrast, the evolutionary biologists with whom I have discussed his work tend to see him as a man whose ideas are so confused as to be hardly worth bothering with, but as one who should not be publicly criticized because he is at least on our side against the creationists." (NYRB, Nov. 30th 1995, p. 46). No one can take any pleasure in the evident pain Gould is experiencing now that his actual standing within the community of professional evolutionary biologists is finally becoming more widely known. If what was a stake was solely one man's self-regard, common decency would preclude comment.
But as Maynard Smith points out, more is at stake. Gould "is giving non-biologists a largely false picture of the state of evolutionary theory" -- or as Ernst Mayr says of Gould and his small group of allies -- they "quite conspicuously misrepresent the views of [biology's] leading spokesmen."[1] Indeed, although Gould characterizes his critics as "anonymous" and "a tiny coterie," nearly every major evolutionary biologist of our era has weighed in in a vain attempt to correct the tangle of confusions that the higher profile Gould has inundated the intellectual world with.[2] The point is not that Gould is the object of some criticism -- so properly are we all -- it is that his reputation as a credible and balanced authority about evolutionary biology is non-existent among those who are in a professional position to know.
[big snip] Now, given the foregoing, one is left with the puzzle of why Gould so customarily reverses the truth in his writing. We suggest that the best way to grasp the nature of Gould's writings is to recognize them as one of the most formidable bodies of fiction to be produced in recent American letters. Gould brilliantly works a number of literary devices to construct a fictional "Gould" as the protagonist of his essays and to construct a world of "evolutionary biology" every bit as imaginary and plausible as Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County. Most of the elements of Gould's writing make no sense if they are interpreted as an honest attempt to communicate about science (e.g., why would he characterize so many researchers as saying the opposite of what they actually do) but come sharply into focus when understood as necessary components of a world constructed for the fictional "Gould" to have heroic fantasy adventures in -- adventures during which the admirable character of "Gould" can be slowly revealed.
I could dig up many more quotes but it would take too much time. The above letter is available at this LINK
I dare say the biggest regret of most of the people who feel that way is not having been able to do it to him personally while he was still alive....
Agreed.
I may have my beefs with some of Gould's writings, but this isn't the thread for that.
And as to speculation on his eternal reward, this is not a time for spite and glee, and those who see it as such risk their own eternity.
God rest his soul.
Most true Christians I know take no delight in anyone "roasting eternally". In fact, many missionaries have given up their lives because of their sorrow on seeing souls lost. Jesus spoke of Hell. He also spoke of beginnings and the global Flood that many evolutionists ridicule.
So, in the end, we must all make up our mind. As C.S. Lewis put it so well, Jesus was either a liar, a lunatic, or is God Almighty. It's really that simple of a choice. I pray we all chose well.