Hi Peg,
Don't you ever tire of being wrong? You must enjoy it, because even the simplest search for the term "spontaneous generation" would have put you right, but no...
What Dawkins describes in the extract quoted is abiogenesis. It is not spontaneous generation; that's something else.
Wiki writes:
Spontaneous generation or Equivocal generation is an obsolete theory regarding the origin of life from inanimate matter, which held that this process was a commonplace and everyday occurrence, as distinguished from univocal generation, or reproduction from parent(s). The theory was synthesized by Aristotle[1], who compiled and expanded the work of prior natural philosophers and the various ancient explanations of the appearance of organisms; it held sway for two millennia. It is generally accepted to have been ultimately disproven in the 19th Century by the experiments of Louis Pasteur, expanding upon the experiments of other scientists before him (such as Francesco Redi who had performed similar experiments in the 17th century). Ultimately, it was succeeded by germ theory and cell theory.
The disproof of ongoing spontaneous generation is no longer controversial, now that the life cycles of various life forms have been well documented. However, the question of abiogenesis, how living things originally arose from non-living material, remains relevant today.
Spontaneous generation - Wikipedia
Mutate and Survive
"A curious aspect of the theory of evolution is that everybody thinks he understands it." - Jacques Monod