“Mother Nature”

I met a woman just now who believes that nature always repairs itself.  An example she offered was that our local lake (see left), after several years of severe drought, is now full due to the atmospheric river storms that brought record rainfall to the region. “I’m dry,” she said in a sad voice, imitating what the lake told Nature.  “Don’t worry,” Nature replied cheerfully.  “I’ll send you some rain.”

Not wanting to argue, I kept my thoughts to myself, which are as follows:

The biosphere most certainly does have qualities of resilience.  If we stop dumping poison into a river, fish will eventually return.  But there is no intelligent and beneficent spiritual entity that goes about repairing the damage that ignorant and greedy human beings have been inflicting on the Earth.

Further, the myth that such a being exists tends to offer justification for humankind’s criminally stupid behavior.