Religious Reality vs Reality’s Reality

Everything we cannot perceive with our senses is not spiritual. It is simply what has been concealed from our field of view, as evolution has adapted species in the most direct way—for fitness and reproduction.

Getting a view outside our ordinary perceptions show there is much more to be seen, but also exposes the inadequacy of gods perfect creation.

Many times these glimpses turn into religions. Yet the omnipotence of the universe is unaware of its creative power, or even if it is doing it. It is the only one with nothing outside itself to compare to.

It by chance there were an omnipotent awareness called god, it would laugh itself silly if it knew that it was an object of worship. Who me?? ROTFLMAO

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What is God and Why It’s Not

Sacredness is not a relationship with belief. This is a categorical error. Beliefs are simply ideas we like to think on then entertain out of preference—then wrongly cling to out of credulous insecurity. Belief is needed because it is not real. Quantum Theory is the closest thing to real that the general population has been exposed to. It demonstrates what is unseen by the senses—this is god.

Highly charged emotional states or chemically enhanced experience may at times give one a glimpse into the hidden portions of reality. This is no more spiritual than your normal existence—it is only different. Calling it a deity is supposing that anything outside our normal perceptions is god, when in reality the process of evolution has not seen fit to expose more than the needed perceptions to eat and reproduce.

That the ground of being is some kind of entity is a fundamental mistake. There may be something underneath it all but it is not a being, it IS being. It is the way things grow or become—no-thing knows how it is done or that it is doing it. Like how you grow your hair or raise your hand. You just do it never knowing how. This is god, if there is such a thing, which I just explained is not a thing.

The idea that god is a being is a projection from our individual aspects of form, which is not too far off the truth. Not as individuals but as apertures of the whole. Every bit is meaningful to us because every bit is the one thing.

Driving with the top down at the speed of life can get a little messy. Getting a glimpse now and the can be rewarding but not meaningful—it doesn’t do anything and is at odds with evolutionary fitness. Plus there is actual thrill in not knowing—this is what makes the Great Mystery meaningful. What point would actually be meaningful if there was no mystery?

If there are entities that know more than we, this is god until we realize they only have different evolutionary hacks and perceptions, a different peep hole into the objective reality that we see vey little of. To see 10% more may very well overload the circuitry and distract evolutionary fitness as we know it.

What we don’t see may or may not be more advanced or better, but simply outside our sensory perceptions and immiscible. We would be as much a mystery to them as they are to us—unless they have evolved to see things they cannot interact with, like watching tv.

Deb Schell, Missouri

Paranormal

We are paranormal.

There are creatures similar to us who live among us, that have churned down a different evolutionary path and perception, that which we cannot see nor associate with but in glimpses.

This animation with its limited sensory awareness—unable to see, hear, or even comprehend much of the environmental spectrum, are not normal in the vastness of this cosmic game. We are the anomaly too—short lived, temporary forms who occasionally capture a peek into what is normal of the cosmos, yet beyond our divergent evolution.

It’s all around and yet we can’t see it. We have not evolved to see reality, but to not see reality. If evolution is true, throughout history selection pressure to achieve one thing has distracted our senses from the very beginning to achieve reproduction using shortcuts. The cheapest, most direct route that adaptive behavior could do to replicate our genes.

With biological evolution, from the time of the single cell to now, we have seen nothing outside of the most direct path to achieve this. Reality is far too much a distraction for evolution to allow us stop and notice.

Now that we know that nothing can be fully known… now what? Certainly there are many theories that are useful—even without our understanding it, but with our limited range of perception and reliance on this quirky, temperamental, three pound blob of fat, reality would overwhelm the senses like an acid trip, productivity and longevity would cease, and those that saw the fullness of the universe teeming with trillions of distractions would be virtually paralyzed.

Is Fundamental Reality as We See It?

Do our senses give us truths about the structure of objective reality, whatever that structure may be? Quite frankly no, it doesn’t.

Long ago science set a theory to explain conscious agents and experience, yet have failed to provide one bit of proof that conscious emergence is actually the process. There have been some brilliant people working on it for quite some time, yet not one case or process has been identified as true—that this particular mechanism leads to that. Not very good progress considering how long they’ve been at it.

Using the evolutionary models and calculations, the probability is zero that any of our senses report any truths about the structure of reality—Donald Hoffman

Since space time is doomed as a theory (Nima Armani-Hamed, David Gross, Ed Witten) so are the standard models of conscious emergence as a fundamental property of evolved brains. It is appearing more and more the opposite is true—that brains are the result of consciousness, as well as everything else. And that reality as we see it, isn’t fundamental at all.

So space-time is no longer fundamental but seems to be an emergent property of consciousness. It has been a useful theory and created many beneficial gadgets and technologies, but it will soon be replaced to take us far beyond the present kind.

So what is reality constructed of and what would it look like if we could perceive it with our senses? Please watch this interview With Lex Fridman and Donald Hoffman.

Augmented Reality

If the perception of reality can be augmented, is it really reality? if perceptions can be altered in any way by our sensual acuities, are those perceptions truly bona fide? If the world were real it would not be ever-changing. And when I say real, I mean that substance or substratum of all particles* and existence. That isness that endures in spite of all biological forms.

Augmenting reality has “real world” implications, like car crashes and pedestrian accidents, as in n established Poké Stops. Augmenting reality emphasizes the blind spots we already have and creates new ones, virtually enhancing the personal preference by eliminating the things that don’t fit our likes or dislikes

“The best case for life as a simulation is augmented reality. If you assume any improvement at all, soon the games will be indistinguishable from what we considers reality”—Elon Musk.

Reality is the familiar perceptions we generally ignore. That same reality has changed dramatically since man could put into words. “God spoke to Adam and gave him commandments” Is not this a form of augmented reality, describing nature with symbols—letters, words, numbers, and counting? The rise of language, writing, and math has fixed reality to a particular style of describing it, which isn’t it at all.

Stare at the image. Rotate it upside down and blink 3 times.

*According to modern physics a particle is an “excitation of a field”. That is you—

Perception or Reality—Which is Better

Does natural selection really favor seeing reality as it is? Fortunately, we don’t have to wave our hands and guess; evolution is a mathematically precise theory. We can use the equations of evolution to check this out. We can have various organisms in artificial worlds compete and see which survive and which thrive, which sensory systems are more fit.

So, in my lab, we have run hundreds of thousands of evolutionary game simulations with lots of different randomly chosen worlds and organisms that compete for resources in those worlds. Some of the organisms see all of the reality, others see just part of the reality, and some see none of the reality, only fitness. Who wins?

Well, I hate to break it to you, but perception of reality goes extinct. In almost every simulation, organisms that see none of reality but are just tuned to fitness drive to extinction all the organisms that perceive reality as it is. So the bottom line is, evolution does not favor veridical, or accurate perceptions. Those perceptions of reality go extinct.

We’re inclined to think that perception is like a window on reality as it is. The theory of evolution is telling us that this is an incorrect interpretation of our perceptions. Instead, reality is more like a 3D desktop that’s designed to hide the complexity of the real world and guide adaptive behavior. Space as you perceive it is your desktop. Physical objects are just the icons in that desktop.

Once we let go of our massively intuitive but massively false assumption about the nature of reality, it opens up new ways to think about life’s greatest mystery. I bet that reality will end up turning out to be more fascinating and unexpected than we’ve ever imagined.

The theory of evolution presents us with the ultimate dare: Dare to recognize that perception is not about seeing truth, it’s about having kids—Cognitive Scientist Donald Hoffman

TED talk HERE

So, do we experience the world as it actually is, or as we need it to be? It seems more and more that life is an illusion. Not of the hocus pocus kind, but as a means of survival —

Ruminating on Belief—

Belief holds only a temporary benefit until a premise has been proven, not a goal in itself—when do we move on?

Understanding your human nature is an important key to resisting the patterns that sustain anchoring bias—that deep tendency to adhere to the first information acquired on any given subject. Ruminating that first morsel—a lifetime of informational cud chewing. How hard is it to change what you’ve been taught in ignorance of the subject, then believed? It takes a miracle, but let’s face it, in those first moments of exposure we’re all ignorant—and gullible to the authority, whether it be parents, professors, or pastors.

Then comes the backfire effect, a near universal, automatic reaction to repudiating evidence of your mere faith, which strengthens your beliefs in spite of better solutions—digging in, protecting those little nuggets wrapped up in your skull when new ideas or evidence is counter to what you believe. Norepinephrine is released in the brain when facts are presented counter to what we believe, creating a fight or flight (or stubbornness) to adopt new information. Religions grow from this stubbornness of human hormones and hardwiring.

Take Darwin for example; He himself was attuned to this phenomenon and lamented his discovery, struggling to procede openly with the Origin of Species because of the effect it would have on everything and everyone he knew—very aware that the reception his evidence would bring a fight.

No matter the spiritual belief, people take great comfort in what they already understand—even if it is a garbled mess to everyone else. Replaying their same old themes—reruns that are familiar and predictable. In today’s world we have to adapt quickly to keep up with technology, processes, and the devices. But belief is a special carrot, hampering progress with archaic, inerrant faith—the comfort zone, the one tool of the devil that keeps you enslaved to your biggest weakness—that overburdened ability to believe what you are initially told, even when it’s obvious it isn’t true.

Just believe. Convincing your mental self by answering your own prayers (you know that talking to yourself thing where you reason away your own mind) and making excuses for the writers inadequacies and failed promises.

Give up and let god? That is the literal example of human damnation—Abrahamic religions ability to stop the flow of actual growth and progress through mandated belief (then we defend it out of hormonal response).

Our perceptions are much more faulty than accurate. It’s no wonder the majority of the world believes something that can’t be seen, measured, or heard—craving that super hero to comfort their struggles—simply because they were told one exists and we are obligated to say yes to a fault.

Faith is pretending not to trust your poor judgement—which is using your own poor judgement to allow someone else to chose your path for you. Understanding your physiology is the key to moving on.