Illusion, Reality, one and the same?
 

Many people will call others crazy when they believe in things not able to be witnessed. These include unicorns, vampires, divine beings, wyrms, ghosts, ghouls, etc. People will demand proof that these are real and not just found in the imagination. So, I challenge all the non-believers today. I state that anything created by the mind exists in reality, and anything created by the mind is in fact actually illusion. Therefore reality is an illusion. Let me explain by focusing on all the understood and acknowledged senses that humans use.

1. Psychic/Sixth Sense: This sense is not acknowledged by most, in fact, it is criticized by most because not all experience it. There are a few people in this world with the capability in their brain to perform things and "see" things many in this world are unable to. Most "normal" people will state that these psychics are off their rockers and most likely insane. They say this because they cannot witness with the senses they have the same things the psychic witnesses. Therefore, according to people lacking a sixth sense, the people with the "sixth sense" are crazy and not attune to reality.

2. Sight: Sight is a very powerful sense that most rely on to say something is real. Yet, even someone's sight can deceive them. They can view a tree in the middle of the night and really see it as a monster of some sort. They go back to it later, and it is once again a tree. Sight is powered by the brain and is completely reliant on the brain in order to interpret what is being seen.

3. Sound: Sound is another powerful sense that many rely on to guide them when they are unable to see. Yet, they can also be deceived by sounds. Innocent winds can sound very malicious and misleading as well. Sound is powered by the brain and is completely reliant on the brain in order to interpret what is being heard.

4. Touch: Touch is the next sense a human will use if sight and smell fail. This one differs from the previous two in that touch actually puts the individual in danger and is in most cases not the preferred sense when testing reality. It requires a personal closeness that many avoid by using objects that have already been trusted by the senses instead. Touch is powered by the brain and is completely reliant on the brain in order to interpret what is being felt.

5. Smell: Smell is a sense that allows many to find differences in things that may not differ in sight or sound. Unlike sight and sound, using smell as a guidance tool for reality is also more dangerous to do, like using the sense of touch, because it can physically harm you by ingesting certain smells into your nostrils to mess with your brain directly. It requires more of a personal closeness in order to be able to smell something. It is also powered by the brain, and is completely reliant on the brain in order to interpret what is being smelled.

6. Taste: When you can't distinguish something by sight, sound, smell, or touch, taste is usually your last option to determine what something is. It is by far the most personal as you literally have to place some part of the object in question inside your mouth and beyond the integrity of your skin shield. Placing something inside of you is by far the most dangerous of all as the object is bypassing the most effective shield you have, which is your skin. Taste is also powered by the brain and is completely reliant on the brain in order to interpret what is being tasted.

As you can see, all the senses that humans rely on to determine the reality they live in are completely reliant on the brain. Knowing this, how can you truly determine if anything is real at all. If everything is reliant on the brain, then nothing can truly exist without the brain. The brain is a tool used to create an illusory world. If you take away the brain, the source of the illusion, real reality will shine through. If everything created by and interpreted by the brain is labeled as reality, why then, is imagination and fantasy assumed creatures not also considered reality? All reality is fantasy, all fantasy is reality. Anything interpreted by the brain is reality as defined by humans, but is in its own way imaginary since without the brain the reality does not truly exist.

Supporting evidence that sight is in the brain and not the eyes:



Even though you know that the inside of the mask does not look the same as the outside, it is almost impossible not to see it as a correct face.

Granted, what you can see is certainly limited by your eyes (clarity, color, depth perception). What you can see is thus determined by your eyes, but what you do see is determined by your brain.

Of course, hallucinations are completely contained in the brain.

Yes, but are you sure the reality you experience is the same reality that lets the brain exist. Or maybe the brain provides an illusion via the senses to hide you from the real reality you actually exist in.

You are kidding me right? Why then do dragons, fantasy settings, vampires, unicorns, etc all have extreme visual images that most agree on when they see a picture of one? How can they not exist if they are recognized globally?

How can you be so sure? Just because your brain tells you this? Your brain just creates the illusion you call reality so you can't see the real reality that the brain exists in.

Why not? You are a slave to your brain, and you do what it desires. You see what it wants you to see. You hear what it wants you to hear. You smell what it wants you to smell. You taste what it wants you to taste. You feel what it wants you to feel. You think what it wants you to think. It enslaves you, and it enjoys every minute of it.

Religion is fantasy, and it is recognized globally. [No offence to anyone]
People question and fear the same things - which is why there are many similar myths and legends in different cultures.
There is no physical proof that someone has ever physically [seen, touched, smelt, tasted, or heard] unicorns or vampires, or any other fantasy creature.


I'm sorry, but what you are suggesting seems rather foolish. The brain is apart of an organism [humans in this case], and it may send out messages that help us control out body, and yes, we can be fooled by what we [hear, taste, touch, see, and smell], but those are human faults[by this I mean limitations] not the brain tricking us. There is no evidence that a brain has it's own mind to control us. Unless this is not what you are saying, if not, please explain further.

1. Prove religion is more fantasy than the five senses.

2. Why do you limit your judgment on what is real by only a fraction of what the brain uses to let you recognize things in the material world? By this I mean, you limit your reality to the five senses, and nothing else the brain allows you to experience, yet the five senses are fueled by the brain as well. Why do you draw a line, and how do you know that line is correct?

Why is it foolish? Have you ever really looked indepth at this? Humans can do nothing without their brain telling them what to do. They cannot think outside their brain's capacity and they cannot do things without their brain's approval. Everything you rely on that you call reality is created by the brain. How can you be so sure you are not enslaved by your brain? When you become paralyzed, that area no longer has communication with the brain. all of a sudden, you no longer feel pain or pleasure in that area. Pain and pleasure are illusions. If you remove the source of the illusion, you no longer see reality as the majority see it. In fact, the more detrimental your brain is, the more insane you are considered by your peers. This is because your brain, the source of your entire illusion, is weakening its hold on you and you cannot be provided with the same reality that all the other brains produce for everyone else. So, because you see things different, you are labeled as insane and sometimes put in psych wards depending on how insane you get.

- I say religion is fantasy more so than our senses because we cannot experience it, and I doubt who ever wrote it[being any/most religions/myths/legends] truely experiences it either.

I don't limit my judgment. I also have my personal experiences to help me decide what is real. I draw the line between fantasy and reality becasuse fantasy is not reality, and reality is what is /real/.

The brain does not have a mind of it's own.
Humans are a complex organism - just like our bodies can not work without the brain, the brain cannot work without the body. There is no possibility in my mind that my brain is 'controlling' me.

I don't concider pain and pleasure an illusion. If you turn a light off, a bulb doesn't work any more. That doesn't make the light that came from that bulb an illusion.

Depending on what you mean by 'insane' it has nothing to do with the brain - it's a chemical imbalance that may /effect/ the brain. Nothing to do with the brain controlling you to believe whatever 'reality' you're seeing.

And yet, what you experience could easily be every bit as untrue as you say religion is. Your memory is falliable, your personal history is a myth revised and rewritten every time you think of it; this is why when ten people witness an event there are ten extremely confused stories; this is why interrogators try to keep witnesses from discussing the event among themselves because in comparing they will change their stories. We try to fill in the gaps in our memories. It's so easy to do this and form a picture in our mind of an something that we are absolutely certain happened, absolutely certain we experienced, and yet not be true to the 'facts' at all.

Also, I would like to draw a line, admittedly a dotted, wavy one, between myth/religion and fantasy. Myth, Religion, and Science are all attempts to explain reality. Fantasy is deliberate disassociation, or perhaps incongruence, with reality.

No one has ever physically seen, touched, smelt, tasted, or heard evolution, dark matter, or gravity either. Can ideas not have an existence of their own?

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Tutela, you really like Descartes, don't you?

Yes. But I still experience my reality. :/
I don't get your point.
Because of human fault, we may forget things....But how does this prove that the lives we lead are not 'reality'[/B]

Yes actually, I would say seeing, touching, and examining skeletons and fossiles are experiencsing evolution.
They have facts and proof to back up all those things.

Where is your facts + proof... It's intirely theory you present here.

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I guess it all depends on what you want to believe.
I believe that your theory is false. :]

That is my point. Your reality. Someone else's reality accepts that those myths are true. The lives we remember leading are not the facts as they happened. Since our memories cannot tell us 'the facts', what's to say that the memories of someone whose experience included those myths cannot be equally valid?

I have a t-shirt that says on eighth day God created fossils. J/K

Seriously though, those are theories. Good theories, but still theories. Seeing, touching, and examining skeletons and fossils is not experiencing evolution, it's experiencing skeletons and fossils. Evolution is an idea, to evolution, you, individually would have to go through the process.

I mentioned gravity because they also have mathematical proofs to back up String Theory, and gravity doesn't fit.

Okay, Scientific proof, (or at least support) for the idea that religion/myth may have some general validity: God gene - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Event Memory and Autobiographical Memory for the Events of September 11, 2001"; Pezdek, Kathy.

Schemas are patterns; gaps in the memory are filled in from the pattern; details of the pattern become a part of the memory whether or not they were actually a part of the memory. The memory, therefore, cannot be trusted as absolute fact. So if that memory, like a memory formed from a myth/religion schema, cannot be trusted as absolute fact, it has the same likelihood of validity as the myth/religion infused memory.

So that need exists for no reason?

I feel like where getting to the point where most debates end: agree to disagree.

What we call reality is our perception of it. Reality is what exists beyond perception. Reality is what is interpreted by your brain and then created is the illusion that you call reality. To say that we see reality as it is if we are sane is ridiculous. Different animals have different hearing ranges, sight ranges, etc. We can not see UV rays or IR rays. When you see something at a distance and it is blurry, the object is not actually blurry itself, but your perception of it is that. Much of our interpretation of reality is also culturally instilled. A Christian says that the reality is that God exists, an atheist says the reality is that there is no God. You can not even trust your own brain to tell you the truth. Studies have shown that someone looking at something but focusing on one part will no notice changes happening. There is a video of two people doing a simple card trick, and at the end of the video, they show you that all the while you were focusing on the hands, off-screen they changed the tablecloth, backdrop, and the shirts of the people. Most people never notice. This is because the brain was not paying attention, so when it notices the changed object it assumes it was always that way. Another example is a study where people were shown images of a hot air balloon with them photoshopped into it. The people were asked if they remembered the trip, and a large majority said they did. The brain, when confronted with the image that seems real, assumes that even though it doesn't remember this, it must have happened, and it creates memories of the event. To truly experience reality, you would have to be every single thing that ever existed, and even then you may not experience all of reality.

Which is why all realities are equally valid, and the dragons and unicorns are just as believable as velociraptors and archaeopteryae. Science is modern-day myth.

Wow....This actually makes sense to me! :O It's weird, too, because i have always found myself wondering "is my reality the same as everybody else's?" so it kinda makes sense that this makes sense to me.
What we see is what our brain lets us see, what we feel is what our brain wants us to feel, what we smell and what we hear, it's what our brain wants us too see, smell, hear, think, because we can't think beyond our brain capacity. And that's because we are completely controlled by our brain!
And what i think is reality....Could be completely different than what you think is reality, and then it's not the real reality at all, just what we both think is real. And that's why there are different religions, because in a Christian's reality God is there, and in an aitheist's reality there is no god. And some believe in more than one god, etc.
And if your, uh, arm, for example, became paralized, you wouldn't feel any pain or pleasure in it, wouldn't be able to move it. That's because pain and pleasure are illusions created by the brain, and since your arm lost contact with your brain, it can't move because your brain was powering it, and controlling it.
And people that are supposedly "insane", and out of contact with reality...Are they really? Or are they just more in touch with the real reality than others?
So, if the eyes could work without the brain behind them....We would see reality.
Wow, that really does make sense to me.

Or the opposite is true. If one loses an arm, that person finds themself subject to phantom limb sensation, pain in the missing arm. His brain believes that he still has an arm, so when you place a mirror so that the reflection of his remaining arm seems to be the one he lost, he automatically tries to move both arms. This is a case of your brain and 'reality' being at odds.