That's somewhat contradictory though. In so far as we express nature, we should be as zombie-like as the physical shuffling of molecules or asteroids.

There's a question of emphasis here. Yes, we come from nature, but nature divides itself by complexifying and evolving autonomous regions and stages. Nature is a wild hyper-creator, so nature creates everything that can fit in space and time, and one natural construct needn't conform to another's patterns. So autonomous people indeed are natural in one sense, but anti-natural in another: we go our way, the way we envision in our mind that entertains counterfactuals and ideals.