What Annie Dillard is telling us is that new physics can delve into the nature of things, but cannot really explain nature itself. There is a higher power, she quotes a scientist, not influenced by our wishes, which finally decides and judges. This higher power is something a microscope cannot detect or any number of test tubes cannot closely examine. Nature is why animals flee at the sight of humans, why a creek runs undisturbed, and why seasons change and things are born, grow, mature, wither and die.
She is in effect cautioning us to accept many things as they are. One can think of why some people want to dissect a butterfly to determine how and why it flutters when it flies, or why a bumble bee, against all laws of physics, can fly despite its weight.
Her idea seems to be that one should observe, not change, and certainly not alter the state of Nature. If there is one characteristic, she points out, it is free will which science cannot fully explain. The whole universe, she writes, is a swarm of those wild, wary energies, the touch and go of the creek for example. One can sense that she would like to put a "Do Not Disturb" sign on further experimentation which may enhance some knowledge but does not solve nature's riddles or its characteristics. Nature, like her creek, is really all touch and go.
God is not a priority for the Naturalist. He suspects that nature goes its own way, regardless of any supernatural guidance which a religionist holds dear. He sees nature as a progression of events, one happening because one before it happened. It goes without much saying that a Naturalist seems to believe that God is a benevolent onlooker to the nature of things. Therefore, one could state that the relationship between a Naturalist and God is that both are amazed at, interested in, and yet really helpless to change the events of nature.
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