There is a massive amount of factors in the perceived external world that humans can have some control over, even if it takes periods of time longer than many lifetimes to more fully develop this control. Indeed, a standard human lifetime at this time is not long enough to scientifically advance to where we are now in one generation, especially since scientific correlations must often be stumbled into. Unlike logical truths, correlations between natural events are not knowable (for non-omniscient beings) without experiential prompting, and even then they are only knowable on the level of logical possibilities, what would follow from certain ideas about nature if true, and what one's subjective sensory perceptions suggest is the case. There is no metaphysical necessity or intrinsic certainty in the laws of nature or in how one could use them to guard against natural forces, whereas reason is inherently true, absolutely certain, and the only immutable thing in existence. Reason must be relied on to even know what one can of one's sensory experiences when the inverse is not true. Even so, it is possible to make great advances based on long-term observations of nature that ironically protect humans from nature.
Communication can now occur across enormous distances due to electronic devices, providing the option to hear someone's voice or see their face without being remotely close to them in a geographical sense. Modern transportation, despite having its own flaws and difficulties, allows for people to travel local, national, and international distances faster and more safely than before. Buildings and vehicles can be equipped with climate control capabilities to protect against temperature fluctuations of an unsafe or merely unwanted kind. Electronic technology can produce lighting and heat, previously accessible from sources like the sun, campfires, or torches. Medicine can aid the immune system in protecting against disease of bacterial and viral origins, while highly-developed projectile weapons can aid physical strength in protecting against animals and other people. So much of modern technological triumph over vulnerability to nature, though technology relies on materials that originate in nature, is taken for granted by some of the same people who stereotype the younger generations as ungrateful for the relative privileges of contemporary life.
While humans are still biological creatures living in nature and are still quite vulnerable to its power, a great deal of the threat posed by the environment can be partly or entirely nullified by using human mastery over matter. Genuine triumph over the natural world has been achieved to some extent. Still, a hurricane, flood, heat wave, or freeze could devastate even the more developed societies of the planet, if only it strikes at an inopportune time or with enough severity. All the same, the very existence of most things observed in the external world cannot be proven to exist, only to be perceived as if they exist. Matter exists, but even the sole way for a human to actually know this [1]--which requires making no assumptions, intentionally discovering the objective truths of logic, and then discovering what logically follows from very specific truths--is something that most people would almost certainly not understand in their current intellectual state or be outright terrified of.
That some sort of matter exists, both in the sense that one's consciousness inhabits a body (whose form and size cannot be known from just perceiving that one has certain limbs, size, or appearance) and in the sense that there is an environment or stimulus beyond one's body, is knowable, but very difficult to actually discover. It is in fact easier to realize that there is by logical necessity an uncaused cause, even if it is only oneself or the entity that brought oneself into existence. Since self-creation, matter past-eternally existing without a beginning, and coming into existence without some kind of metaphysical cause are all logical impossibilities, there is an uncaused cause, whether it is the deity of any popular religion or not.
Nature's deity, which either created the physical universe or initiated the causal chain which led to its existence, would be something humans are far more vulnerable to than natural disasters or the obstacles we have only overcome by gradual technological progression. So many people by all appearances believe at least one of two things. They probably think that seeing something means it must exist outside of their consciousness, though they tend to have never even realized the distinction between consciousness and the external world; they also likely hold that something must not exist if they cannot see it. The external world, or as many people might call it instead, nature, is visible, but for the existence of most things within it is utterly unverifiable for humans. The uncaused cause, on the contrary, is not visible and yet exists by logical necessity whether or not the natural world does. It might not be the Biblical Yahweh, though there is a great deal of evidence that it is, but there is an uncaused cause, and such a being could wield power far beyond the totality of nature's. That people worry more about the cosmos than the uncaused cause is because of irrationalistic priorities.
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