Yeah, this seems to be a clash between secular humanism (as in deGrasse Tyson's centrist brand) and the more existential, cosmicist take on naturalism. It's a good question I'll take up again soon: Is nature monstrous, given atheism? I've argued this before, as you know, but it's worth doing so again.

One line of argument I like is that we should posit nature's monstrousness to help explain the anomaly of our historic rebellion against the wilderness. We bootstrapped personhood and civilization to get away from nature. Why, if we weren't unconsciously disgusted by nature's inhuman indifference to whatever occurs in it? Aren't we so narcissistic that we're set on imposing human values onto everything that's fundamentally different from us? Don't we do this by domesticating/enslaving livestock, and by replacing the wilderness with extensions of our bodies and minds (the artificial domains, laws, and cultures of society)?