The New Gospel

… I prefer the “cold bath” theory that nature can be truly “cruel” and “indifferent” in the utterly inappropriate terms of our ethical discourse – because nature does not exist for us, didn’t know we were coming (we are, after all, interlopers at the latest geological moment), and doesn’t give a damn about us (speaking metaphorically).  I regard such a position as liberating, not depressing, because we then gain the capacity to conduct moral discourse — nothing more could be more important — in our own terms, free from the delusion that we might read moral truth passively from nature’s factuality.