Natural Disasters: Does Nature Hate Us?

[icymist]

When a natural disaster such as a hurricane or earthquake or even a disease such as AIDs occurs, one perspective that sometimes is adopted is that we are being divinely punished by a deity for some sin or behavior, and that we may even be hated by these divine forces or by nature itself. In this article, I'm going to argue that there is no divine anger in any natural disaster and that nature does not hate us at all.

Although in Paganism it is common to associate deities and other types of entities with different forces of nature and can be useful to do as a way of connecting with nature, it's also important to consider carefully the idea of a deity causing a natural disaster. For example, if a tsunami rolls in, is Poseidon to blame for it? Although Poseidon or other deities can provide a face for nature and its realities, this doesn't necessarily mean that they have decided to conjure a hurricane. While it would be convenient and easy to blame a natural disaster on a deity, it's important to consider that a storm, tsunami, or other natural force is simply part of the ecosystem we live in, and as such is part of the risk involved in living on this planet. This perspective does ask humans to be responsible for adapting to said natural force, and while one method of adapting can involve making a plea to a deity of your choice, it may also be helpful to invest in the appropriate safeguards one can take for handling nature.

Even without the personification of a God, some might argue that a hurricane is nature's way of expressing hatred toward us for defiling it. Given that global warming seems increasingly real and may be helped along by human activities, nature might hate us for all the disruptions that we cause to the ecosystems we inhabit.

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