Drawing from my own experience, I believe that generally Nature is more benign than neutral or hostile, but this maybe due to the fact that I have not experienced disasters such as in New Orleans. The supplies we receive from our environment such as water and food keep us alive; without them we would not exist. So at times nature is a killer and at others a nurturer; it does what it can to keep the world in order.
Nature is everything so we cannot assign it into any separate group. Nature is all matter and energy, especially in its essential form. In scale, "nature" includes everything from the universal to the subatomic. This includes all things animal, plant, and mineral; all natural resources and events (hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes). It also includes the behavior of living animals, and processes associated with inanimate objects.
Based on Charles Darwin's "survival of the fittest" theory, Nature is a very powerful machine that has modified the way certain species have evolved in order to survive.
Organisms most suited to their environment had more chance of survival if their species falls upon hard times. Dinosaurs in particular became extinct due to the hostile, unstable environment they were confined to. Many species have had to evolve to nature's ever changing environment passing on traits from generation to generation, affecting the overall makeup of the population.
As human population increases, we learn of ways to control nature, and how to benefit from nature's supplies. In 2000, the world had 6.1 billion human inhabitants. This number could rise to more than 9 billion in the next 50 years. Nature's resources are soon to run out, and when they do, many people will die from starvation and diseases, so we depend on our environment to survive. The world cannot...