Because there is a moral compass, people's fates are not arbitrary, and things matter.

I think that being raised Irish Catholic puts me very much in sympathy with Ken MacLeod's comment that coming from the worldview he was raised in (one of the smaller Scots Calvinist-type churches, I cannot recall the specifics) H.P. Lovecraft is an immensely comforting author to discover, because an indifferent arbitrary universe containing nameless horrors is nicer than one with a moral compass that is out to get you; along which lines, George F. Walker goes on the list of people whose plays I would never want to be in under any circumstances.