The phrase “nature intended” is one of the most obscenely and quietly ludicrous phrases in popular use (outside of inane business jargon). Nature doesn’t intend anything.

Intention presupposes the ability to intend, which means volition, thought, planning, no? You can take one of two beliefs. The first being that some sort of supernatural being or force instigated the universe as we know it and guided the formation of our natural world. The second, quite irrelevant of the universe’s origin, is that life as we know it formed through a process of natural selection. Now, if you take the latter view, you must - I surely think - understand that life as we know it evolved through random selection (see more here). That is, it’s all one extraordinarily large and complex game of strategies and random mutations. There is no intention.

Nature didn’t intend us to have access to regular quotas of sunlight. Rather we evolved such that without regular quotas of sunlight certain physiological functions degrade in their performance. Nature didn’t intend us to eat meat. We evolved with the ability, and perhaps craving, to eat meat.

Perhaps the phrase is just an easy colloquialism, much like attaching volitions to genetic strategies. It nevertheless helps propagate an intellectually lazy idea. Nature has no intentions. Nature reacts, and nothing more.