No, You Are Not a Child of Nature

Pachamama. Note that she is actually made of stones.

My friend Xerxes weighs in against the growing current tendency to anthropomorphize inanimate objects. 

And it is a growing tendency. We see it not just in talk of the planet Earth as “Gaia”; but of “harming Mother Nature,” of Nature having specific preferences and interests, or seeking revenge, or maintaining a “balance”; of Science “knowing” this or that; of this species being “more evolved” or “more highly evolved” than that, as though Evolution per se could have a plan or a direction. Or of “harming” or “damaging” as opposed to the climate simply changing. None of these are sentient beings.

Fine to use these things as convenient or poetic metaphors, as when Carl Sandberg says the fog “comes in on little cat feet.” But no, fog is not a cat. Fine to suggest that God, or even some other supernatural being separate from the object, demon or angel, has interests here. Fine, that is, if you know what you are doing, and can produce a coherent theology. But not the inanimate object itself.

I do not think actual pagans made this mistake. This is childish thinking. I think at least some pagans had to be too smart to do this. They presumed a god who had jurisdiction over the river; they did not suppose this was the physical river itself. That would be absurd. That would simply be an error, a logical fallacy, mistaking a physical for a spiritual thing.