Intelligence in Nature - Jeremy Narby [11]
And replacing God with âblind chanceâ did not solve the problem. Atheism is theism denied, or the other side of the same coin. The word comes from the Greek a theos, without god. Believing that chance and necessity suffice to explain all of nature is a form of faith that has not been conclusively demonstrated. Evolution is ongoing, but believing that chance drives it is an act of faith.
The ayahuasca session was winding down. Flores had ceased to sing, letting us bathe in the sound of the rushing stream and the forest at night. My mind was flooded with thoughts. I pondered the importance of chance. Nature does seem to use chance as a source of variety to diversify and improve itself. My own physical characteristics come from the shuffling of genes that occurred in the reproductive cells of my parents. The genetic deck of cards is shuffled and reshuffled between generations in a highly coordinated process called meiosis, which appears to use randomness to fuel diversity. Chance may have enriched me, but I doubted that it caused me. That life on earth arose by chance is as difficult to prove as the belief that God, or some other entity, created it. Some questions are intriguing to people because they concern us, but that does not mean that they can be answered in any definitive way.
Once I had finished taking notes, I sat quietly in the dark.
Chapter 3
TRANSFORMERS
After visiting Flores, I traveled to Pucallpa, the second-largest town in the Peruvian Amazon. The Pucallpa region used to be part of the homeland of the Shipibo people, but it was overrun and deforested by outsiders during the twentieth century. Despite this loss and devastation, the Shipibo have maintained a strong sense of identity. They recently gained communal land titles to large parts of their territory, and they continue to produce beautiful handicrafts for which they are famous. They are also reputed for the power of their shamans.
I paid a visit to a Shipibo shaman named Guillermo Arévalo Valera. Author of the book Medicinal Plants and Their Benefits to Health, which the federation of indigenous people of the Peruvian Amazon published in 1994, Guillermo is recognized by his peers. People now come from foreign countries to consult him. He lives in a mainly Shipibo neighborhood on the outskirts of Pucallpa. The day of my visit, I knocked on the door and found several of his children sitting in the living room watching television and stroking a large boa constrictor they had just captured. Guillermo was not home yet. The children invited me in to wait. As snakes make me uneasy, I chose to sit across the room at the dining table, rather than with the children on the sofa. Unlike some houses in the neighborhood, which were shacks with electricity, Guillermoâs house has a concrete floor, plumbing, and a well-equipped kitchen.
I spent several hours catching up on my notes, and keeping an eye on the serpent. It was a rather beautiful and calm animal of gray color with black markings and an orange-tipped tail. At one point, the children went outside, and the boa slithered out of sight under the sofa.
Guillermo arrived in the late afternoon. A small, strong man with a commanding presence, he greeted me warmly and invited me to follow him up to his office in the top part of the house. During our conversation, I asked whether he still communicates in his visions with the âowner of animals.â
âBueno,â he replied. âYes, that is possible. I did it several times in the days when I did not come to the city. But now it is no longer possible to have this contact for the very reason that nature is already quite contaminated