© 1959 William S. Sadler
© 1961 Urantia Foundation
Nature is in a limited sense the physical habit of God UB 4:2.1
Therefore, nature, as mortal man understands it, presents the underlying foundation and fundamental background of a changeless Deity and his immutable laws, modified by, fluctuating because of, and experiencing upheavals through, the Working of the local plans, purposes, patterns, and conditions which have been Inaugurated and are being carried out by the local universe, constellation, system, and planetary forces and personalities. UB 4:2.2
Nature is a time-space resultant of two cosmic factors: first, the immutability, perfection, and rectitude of Paradise Deity, and second, the experimental plans, executive blunders, insurrectionary errors, incompleteness of development, and imperfection of wisdom of the extra-Paradise creatures from the highest to the lowest.
Nature therefore carries a uniform, unchanging, majestic, and marvelous thread of perfection from the circle of eternity; but in each universe, on each planet, and in each individual life, this nature is modified, qualified, and perchance marred by the acts, the mistakes, and the disloyalties of the creatures of the evolutionary systems and universes; and therefore must nature ever be of a changing mood, whimsical withal, though stable underneath, and varied in accordance with the operating procedures of a local universe. UB 4:2.3
Nature is the perfection of paradise divided by the incompletion, evil, and sin of the unfinished universes. This quotient is thus expressive of both the perfect and the partial, of both the eternal and the temporal. Continuing evolution modifies nature by augmenting the content of paradise perfection and by diminishing the content of the evil, error, and disharmony of relative reality.
God is not personally present in nature or in any of the forces of nature, for the phenomenon of nature is the superimposition of the imperfections of progressive evolution and, sometimes, the consequences of insurrectionary rebellion, upon the Paradise foundations of God’s universal law. As it appears on such a world as Urantia, nature can never be the adequate expression, the true representation, the faithful portrayal, of an all-wise and infinite God.
Nature, on your world, is a qualification of the laws of perfection by the evolutionary plans of the local universe. What a travesty to worship nature because it is in a limited, qualified sense pervaded by God; because it Is a phase of the universal and, therefore, divine power! Nature is also a manifestation of the unfinished, the incomplete, the imperfect outworkings of the development, growth, and progress of a universe experiment in cosmic evolution.
The apparent defects of the natural world are not indicative of any such corresponding defects in the character of God. UB 4:2.4-7
No, nature is not God. Nature is not an object of worship. UB 4:2.8
The animal nature—the tendency toward evildoing—may be hereditary, but sin is not transmitted from parent to child. UB 188:4.5