Illusion is Equivalent to, But Not Equal to Reality

    A Falling Person Does Not Know He is Falling

As an atheist who recognizes the possibility of something beyond my
understanding - though unconvinced it can be anything anywhere like the
myths about GOD and intentionality that one finds inherent in religion
I can appreciate the following quote very much:

"God is a circle whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is
nowhere. --- from Empedocles, fifth century B.C.

If I had a choice and the time was now (not over 50 years ago), the new
wisdom would certainly be a strong motivation for me to build my life
around astrobiology. Everything I have had to learn about the cosmos has
been an evolution in the knowledge we have acquired in just the last few
decades.

I was curious enough 50 years ago to become a Ham operator. Radio was new
and television experimental. I built everything, including my first
computer with resisters and capacitors. There were no transisters or
circuit boards then. I worked for presidents and for the top field
officers in the War Room in the Pentagon because I was informed by the
latest "state-of-the-art" electronics, and worked with the engineers who
built their crypto and wide-band communications systems. I was there at
the White House when they installed their FIRST television system. It was
delightfully stimulating, but nothing like what we are doing now. I was
there at the White House when Sputnik orbited around the planet and
because of the president ushered in a new age of technology. My uncle
received the first computer, the ENIAC, from the U of Pennsylvania and I
was enthused and amazed when it was demonstrated - enough to want to have
my own computer when nobody knew what to do with them except the
calculations they were doing at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds and later in
the Pentagon with their diode multipliers and tubes doing what today is
done with computer chips.

Physics actually begain with gravity. Einstein was my hero at Princeton
and he changed the way we thought about everything - building on Newtonian
theory which haunted physics up to his time. Today it is Quantum physics
and strings and membranes which are on the mind of many scientists and as
more questions have been raised than
answered.

    Illusion is Equivalent to, But Not Equal to Reality

Most of the universe is composed of Dark Matter.
We are not exactly sure what it is.

And how much of what we perceive is actually an illusion and how much of
it is real?

Hank Roth