It's Not Nice to Fool Mother Nature

Strong and Courageous

Jan 4,2018

“It’s not nice to fool mother nature.”

It’s a common idea that runs through our culture. But where did the idea that it’s not nice to fool mother nature come from? It may have been in existence for a long time, but the phrase became popular in a 1970’s T.V. commercial about a brand of margarine that tasted so close to real butter that when the actress who played mother nature discovered that she had been fooled, she became angry and sent lightning and thunder crashing down from the sky.

View The Commercial:

Little did I realize it at the time, but that presumably innocent commercial actually played a small role in the overarching secularization of our nation.  Why or how might I say this?

To begin with, the idea that nature has a personality, particularly a female personality creates a false narrative about what nature actually is. To define nature as a personality implies that nature has the power to control or even to create which is not within natures ability.

Webster’s Dictionary defines nature as follows: The physical world and everything in it (such as plants, animals, mountains, oceans, stars, etc.) that is not made by people. 

The last sentence in the definition is specific in its limitation of excluding personality. And if nature is not made by people, how is it made and how did it even come into existence? This definition is begging for answers that are not forthcoming.

It’s interesting to see that the whole idea of “mother nature” holds a certain nomenclature that many people believe.  They say yes nature is a female character and also yes to the idea that you should never try to fool her, or bad things will happen to you. (hmm, what about cloning animals?)

Nature responds to physical laws and constants. It does not have the ability to create, particularly in the setting of placing a bolt of lightning in a specific place and time. The laws that nature physically follows are the product of design, intelligent design from a designer.

 The naturalist who claims that there is no God, is stuck with the need for nature to take on a persona in order to hold a consistent worldview. With respect to looking at the definition of “nature” that we have looked at, we see the inconsistency.

Links:

Psalm 14:1

What's The One Question We Should Ask Unbelievers?