Dr. Phil once said, "There is no reality, only perception." There's an excellent YouTube documentary called Everything is a Remix that I recommend; as it helps one understand using an analysis of the movie Star Wars, that everything is a remix of something else. I've come to the conclusion that we are all creating our own reality. The Buddhists in China create their reality. Americans create their reality. Thomas Jefferson sat down and literally wrote up the Declaration of Independence like an artist creating a new reality, which would dictate the next several centuries of the United States. Joseph Smith sat down and dictated Scripture that has organized the LDS/Restoration Churches for decades. Each of us forms our own reality.
Let me be clear though that I am not saying that we create our own laws of physics or mathematics. 1 + 1 equals 2, and yes, what goes up must come down. What I am referring to is perception and cultural values, the language of dreams, symbolism, poetry, and religious parables, etc. For example, the ethical underpinning of the Declaration of Independence, that we are endowed by our Creator with inalienable Rights (to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness) is not a scientific statement but a supernatural claim; it is a form of cultural artistry, the forming of a civilized culture through make-believe concepts like "inalienable Rights."
It's All Make-Believe or Make-Create
An artistic person sits down and will often draw up the plans for a painting, a script for a movie or plans for a building or a city. They draw rough sketches and then add colors and then it is built or created. Some guys in Jerusalem wrote out some sketches and stories based on word of mouth about Jesus, what he was remembered to have said or did; and then those artistic sketches so to speak became a world religion called Christianity that beat out all the other religions and gods in the marketplace of ideas! We create our reality. Religion is not about facts, it's about the power of the imagination and human creativity and the power of ideas to create culture.
I used to think, "Well, I'm going to be rational and scientific and only stick to the cold hard facts." Well turns out that I can't even get away from "make-believing" in the world of science. Because if you're going to go with the hardcore scientific facts and pure reductionism, then you as a person do not even exist. This is illustrated by the character Rust Cohle (played By Matthew Mcconaughey) in True Detective Season 1:
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In one of the episodes, the atheistic nihilist Rust Cohle uses a beer can to illustrate
how the atheistic sciences and philosophies say we don't exist as a person. He cuts the beer can into a figure of a human in order to illustrate that according to atheistic philosophies, we are not a self but are make-believing we are a “person,” we pretending we are a Self:
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Hardcore science just says that you're a bunch of atoms and your mammalian form evolved from other mammals back down to pond scum. You don't even technically exist as a person but you are creating your own sense of identity through a feedback loop in your brain; and your perception of the world isn't even real. So even if I am an agnostic or atheist and go with the science, I'm still engaging in make-belief or belief-creations by forming a self concept or believing in my objective personhood. I'm make-believe in my self, me as a real Me, an objective "I," a person; when all the atheistic sciences and philosophies say I don't really exist: as I don't have a soul and I'm just a collection of atoms and chemical processes pretending to be a self.
According to secular rationality and scientism, I don't even really love anybody either. My brain is making up a concept of this other "person" (who is not a real person but is also a collection of atoms) and my brain wiring is chemically "firing" so that I feel like I am in love but its really a delusion, a chemical "high." For when I feel that I have fallen in love or I love a family member, that is just chemicals in my brain and evolution that hardwired me to pair bond and feel close to my genetic kin. So this whole concept of romantic love is all just make-belief, me just creating these concepts and ideas in my head which is not literally real. Yet the truth according to "science" is our brain needs to believe in our selfhood and love is real in order for us to reproduce and perpetuate the species. In other words, evolution "wants" me to believe in the illusion of the Self and the illusion of Romance.
So if "rational science" tells me I don't really exist in the platonic sense as a person, an objective entity as a self, but my brain is engaged in make belief ("making it up") regarding my personhood, and the people I love don't exist either as static real persons, and the love I feel is not real love but some evolutionary chemical processes, and yet I cannot even function as a human being without these illusions, and Nature evolutionarily "designed" me to form illusions in order to function and reproduce; then I might as well utilize this illusiory function Nature gave me for my benefit, and "make believe" what makes me feel good and empowers me. So if make believing that there's a God and and my life has meaning and purpose and intrinsic worth as a Soul, if that feels true to me and gives me positive energy and vitality through somethimg uplifting to believe in, then I think it would be stupid to not utilize what Nature instilled in me; as for me, such religious ideas are just as beneficial to my life as is belief in the self, the law and justice, and romantic love, etc. So I might as well just make-believe, i.e. create something that makes me happy and fulfills me; and go with what I know best: which is LDS Christianity.
The Suspension of Disbelief within the Theater of Existence:
I readily admit that the Christian Thought World is a Theatrical World based on faith or the suspension of disbelief. But I think that atheistic philosophy and science is also a world of make-belief. Just study quantum mechanics to see what I mean.
In The Willing Suspension of Disbelief, Ed Hooks discusses the willing suspension of disbelief in theatrical transactions:
In a nutshell, the willing suspension of disbelief means the people in the audience know that what they are seeing on stage or screen is a pretend reality, but they are pretending that they do not know that. They accept the given premises of the story being told in order to empathize with the actors.
An example would be knowing that Superman cannot, in reality, fly – and then pretending that you don’t know that. The storyteller tells the audience that, in this story, a man can fly. The audience suspends its disbelief and goes along with that premise.
A theatrical experience is a unique thing. Think about it, focusing for the moment on the legitimate theatre: Actors, audience members, tech crews all come together at the same time in the same place for a common purpose. Their meeting is not any more random than meetings at church, synagogue or mosque. The purpose of this meeting is to share a theatrical experience, and all parties – including the audience members - have to work together to make it happen.
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It is in this shared experience of the suspension of disbelief, that the movie experience happens; and similarly, it is the same with the practice of faith or exercising the imagination in a theatrically similar religious context which entails a suspension of disbelief. In other words, the "spiritual theater" at church becomes experientially real through the shared audience experience of the believers, just as much as the jury is engaging in theatrical make belief in deciding the objective guilt or innocence of a person. Just as we can't create civilized society without the "theater" of courts of justice, I believe that we evolved to engage in a similar theatrics when it comes to religion. This is what makes faith so powerful and causes people to be healthier and happier; as their suspension of disbelief in a religious context is what Nature designed their brain to do from a scientific perspective.
The atheist who condemns such suspension of disbelief is hypocritical in my view, when they themselves suspend their disbelief and choose to make believe in actual inalienable Rights, their existence as a Self and the existence of romantic love; which they suspect are all illusions and nothing more than the perceptual results of evolutionary processes and brain chemicals. Yet, in order to function and support civilization, they willfully enter the theatrical production of Rights, selfhood and romantic love; all taking place in their imagination through faith as the functional assurance of things hoped for, the perceived evidence of things unseen or unproven.
Law and Justice as Mythmaking
The fact is our justice system is a theatrical experience involving the suspension of disbelief. If we went with the cold hard facts and science and rationalism, and concluded there is no God and there is no soul, there would be no objective Right and Wrong. The US Declaration states we are endowed by our Creator with inalienable Rights. The Bill of Rights is predicated on this concept of objective Right and Wrong based on belief in the soul. In a court of law, Justice is served when a person is believed to be guilty or innocent: because it is believed on faith that they have a soul and know right from wrong and had the free willed conscious ability to choose otherwise than they did. It is an object of faith that the criminal could have made a decision otherwise than they did. Atheistic neuroscientists often argue that the concept that anyone could be guilty of freely choosing to commit a crime, is a matter of faith; because they argue that we are all determined biologically and cosmically and never can make 100% Free Will choices. They argue that we are not souls but merely Gene Machines, programmed and conditioned by blind forces in Nature.
So before you make fun of the religious for suspending their disbelief and creating a theatrical world of Good and Evil, remember that if you believe in the law, justice, and the court systems, you are also engaging in the suspension of disbelief and acting on faith. Remember, that outside Christianity or theism, you are not a soul but are make-believing you are a self. So, if according to atheistic philosophers and scientists, Law and Justice are make-believe mythlologies and illusions, and "inalienable Rights" are make-belief and illusions, and we are “laboring under the illusion of having a self” (as Rust Chole puts it) -- and in in fact we ultimately don’t even exist except as transitional evolutionary forms, as mere copy machines spitting out genes like xerox copies only to be dismantled and discarded -- and yet we form such beliefs in order to function as civilized citizens, then isn't faith in unproven assertions like Rights and personhood, a good thing?
In courts of law, judges wear black robes and the court says “all rise” when he enters to show respect and reverence; and the court precedes as if the defendant is a person (has a soul) and knows Right and Wrong (which exist at metaphysical realities). This is as much an enactment of religious theater as the LDS temple endowment is! Without such theatrical make-belief, there could be no ethically functioning secular cities and lawful citizens; and so too, without LDS beliefs many Latter Day Saints and Restoration sects could not be as ethically successful and cohesive as they are. So if the atheist thinks he doesn't have any metaphysical beliefs he is probably mistaken.
In Conclusion:
If God and the soul is an illusion, and religion and/or "spirituality" or a belief system is a construct of the mind and should be rejected because it cannot be scientifically proven according to atheists; then by that logic the concept of the Self is an illusion and therefore the concept of an objective meaning in life is an illusion and life is ultimately meaningless.
On atheism, we have no inalienable Rights as American citizens but our entire court systems of "justice" is a made-up charade, a magic show full of smoke and mirrors with men and women playing "judges" in religious-like black robes acting like religious saints judging the guilt or innocence of others; as if people have free will as a soul but we are pretending when according to atheism there is objective Right and Wrong or Good and Evil, which does not exist.
In reality, our American "morals" and "humanistic values" are actually based on Judeo-Christianity, as Nietzsche argued; and this is backed by the scholarship of Tom Holland (see below). For on atheism, we are all genetically determined cellular robots programmed by nature and physics, without a soul or free will. We are no different from the bugs or the monkeys or saber tooth tigers. We are pretending (or make-believing) to be civilized citizens with human Rights. We are pretending to be a person (having personhood), and pretending to be able to make choices and that we can decide the guilt or innocence of people in courts of law. In other words, we are pretending that we can judge people as to their guilt or innocence. On atheism, not only is there no meaning, no morality, no self (personhood), but love itself is a sickness, a kind of addiction according to atheistic science (see below for more details).
So if we are already pretending and make-believing and constructing reality by engaging in the illusion of free will and human Rights as Americans, how can the American atheist make fun of the "spiritual" person who just goes one step further and make-believes they are more than a cellular robot but an actual soul (a real person) with inherent dignity with actual human Rights; and Good and Evil exist objectively and we are endowed by the Creator with these human Rights that embed morality into something objective and authoritative, as contained in the American "spiritual" document, The Declaration of Independence?
Consider these book covers (that contain hundreds of pages) and these videos, on these subjects, that make make the point in greater detail:
Read an extract of the book Love Sick here (note that I have not read, and thus do not endorse, the rest of the content on the website that contains this linked article. It is just the best source I could find that summarizes the book Love Sick for the purpose and intent of this blog post).
How your brain constructs reality | TED Talks
In this TED Talk playlist are these videos:
How your brain invents your "self" by Anil Seth
23 minutes 10 seconds
Who are you, really? Neuroscientist Anil Seth lays out his fascinating new theory of consciousness and self, centered on the notion that we "predict" the world into existence. From sleep to memory and everything in between, Seth explores the reality we experience in our brains -- versus the world as it objectively might be.
…
Do we see reality as it is? by Donald Hoffman
21 minutes 40 seconds
Cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman is trying to answer a big question: Do we experience the world as it really is ... or as we need it to be? In this ever so slightly mind-blowing talk, he ponders how our minds construct reality for us.
…
Your brain hallucinates your conscious reality by Anil Seth
16 minutes 51 seconds
Right now, billions of neurons in your brain are working together to generate a conscious experience -- and not just any conscious experience, your experience of the world around you and of yourself within it. How does this happen? According to neuroscientist Anil Seth, we're all hallucinating all the time; when we agree about our hallucinations, we call it "reality." Join Seth for a delightfully disorienting talk that may leave you questioning the very nature of your existence.
And this book:
