Is life real or just an illusion?

reply to post by yadda333


There is a movie about the same idea you have stated. The movie is called, The Thirteenth Floor and it's about a game simulation that has people just like us who think there world is real, but it turned out that there world was an illusion.

It's a good movie in my opinion because it made me think about our world.

I dont think so. I mean if that was the case then there would be a higher power in charge of the illusion. Also we as humans would be in complete control of the illusion. I.e someone can go out and shoot someone and end their life. For real. no illusion.

Camus said that the only real question is whether or not to commit suicide.

Think about it for a minute.....

When you really think about it, it's not that hard to believe that this is a simulation. In fact, when you look at how ridiculous some things are in this world, it makes sense that this is a simulation with absurdities built into it.

Perhaps we're being watched, or maybe studied is more appropriate. It would be an Anthropologist's dream to be able to watch an ancient civilization who was, for all intents and purposes, completely unaware of the questionable authenticity of their world. Better yet, what if you could create tension to see how they react. Of course, you also have to take into consideration the major ethical dilemma that all of this poses to the creator of the simulation.

I have to stop writing because I could literally sit here all night pondering this! This is a most fascinating topic and I hope this thread doesn't wither away.

Didn't most of the ancient sages from India declare that the world is an illusion? The question is, who is being entertained by it?

Here is my interpretation:

You are all figments of MY imagination.

Its my world, you all just live in it. Its like the truman show, but the show is only on one channel, my mind.

reply to post by retroviralsounds


Or to look at itt from another angle - you are the star of your own movie. You control your charachter. You choose how they dress, you choose what they say, you choose how you react, you choose how you interperit something or someone. Everything you say and do can have a diffrent effect, each effect has a cause. To Quote an extract from Doreals traslation of the emerald tablets of Thoth:

Know ye, O man,
that all of the future is an open book
to him who can read.
All effect shall bring forth its causes
as all effects grew from the first cause.
Know ye the future is not fixed or
stable but varies as cause brings forth an effect.
Look in the cause thou shalt bring into being,
and surely thou shalt see that all is effect.


So, O man, be sure the effects that ye bring
forth are ever causes of more perfect effects.
Know ye the future is never in fixation but
follows man's free will as it moves through
the movements of time-space toward
the goal where a new time begins.

Man can only read the future through
the causes that bring the effects.
Seek ye within the causation and
surely ye shall find the effects.

If I understand the question correctly, you're asking...

Is this the real life, or is it just fantasy?

I'd argue that we're all

Caught in a Landslide, with no escape from reality.

You should open your eyes, look up to the sky and see.



Sorry, couldn't resist.

Originally posted by WEOPPOSEDECEPTION
Didn't most of the ancient sages from India declare that the world is an illusion? The question is, who is being entertained by it?

That's the number one question on this thread. For all we know, this universe could be an illusion or a science experiment.

reply to post by Rocketgirl


We could all be A.I. bots in one of those military simulations we keep hearing about....

We live out our lives and die in the length of time it takes to run the Simulation in real-time, which could be only minutes to the User.

Oh dear.

There is an absence of truth in this world. In place of that truth there are many illusions. Some people live their life accordingly to them. But, since those people make the majority, the ilusion seems so real. So who knows.

Originally posted by yadda333
When you really think about it, it's not that hard to believe that this is a simulation. In fact, when you look at how ridiculous some things are in this world, it makes sense that this is a simulation with absurdities built into it.

Perhaps we're being watched, or maybe studied is more appropriate. It would be an Anthropologist's dream to be able to watch an ancient civilization who was, for all intents and purposes, completely unaware of the questionable authenticity of their world. Better yet, what if you could create tension to see how they react. Of course, you also have to take into consideration the major ethical dilemma that all of this poses to the creator of the simulation.

I have to stop writing because I could literally sit here all night pondering this! This is a most fascinating topic and I hope this thread doesn't wither away.

Yadda333, I’m with you there is no reason it cannot be some kind of staged simulation. I forget the three alternatives one was do you think the human civilisation could survive to make a computer simulation. If the answer was yes then we would. So someone could have already done it I guess. I’ll have to look it up again some time.

The way I see it is if we were simulated then what we think may be independent of the sim but the sim senses it and eventually makes it real. Take it to an extreme if enough of us think there are aliens then there will be aliens – eventually.

Its late here but I’ll be back when my sim self has recharged

That scenario was taken verbatim from Rene Descartes.

Look into his Discourse on the Method and Principles of Philosophy if the idea interests you.

Descartes point was that thought constitutes existence, or that thought is existent in a tangible sense. (thus his famous "I thing therefore I am").

Originally posted by Rocketgirl
Hi everyone,after posting in some of the user threads I decided to make my very first thread on here. So I hope this is the right board for it and if it's not then the administrators can move it to it's proper place.

What I have here is something I got from a teen site. There was a person who came up with the idea that life could be an illusion.Here's what the person came up with and remember that this didn't come from me,I'm just "borrowing" it.

Imagine that a human being has been subjected to an operation by an evil scientist the persons brain has been removed from the body and placed into a vat of nutrients which keeps the brain alive the nerve endings have been connected to a super scientific computer which causes the person to believe the illusion that everything is perfectly normal there seem to be people, objects the sky, etc, but really all the person is experiencing is the result of electronic impulses traveling from the computer to the nerve endings.

Here's the question that is being asked: Is life just an illusion for us too?

Call me naive but what does it matter if life is an illusion if the illusion is so perfect that we believe it to be real? If the illusion's real enough for us to believe it's real, then for all intents and purposes, it is real.

I think everyone's had similar thoughts to this. As a child I wondered if we were just the dreams of some sort of greater being or if our universe is nothing more than a elaborate computer simulation (Think the Sims on steriods)

Originally posted by majestictwo
The way I see it is if we were simulated then what we think may be independent of the sim but the sim senses it and eventually makes it real. Take it to an extreme if enough of us think there are aliens then there will be aliens – eventually.

Its late here but I’ll be back when my sim self has recharged

That could be possible. If that is true then there is someone controlling every action we make.

reply to post by Rocketgirl


Life is an opportunity to choose between one of two different eternities.

Living an aimless life, motivated by nothing more than selfish earthly passions, is a life destined to be lived in an eternity of darkness.

Living a life motivated by divine passions leads to illumination, eternal life, and bliss. The divine nature of the creator is eternal.

The reality is, at the end of your life, you will have become a devil or an angel and live in one of two eternities.

The illusion is everything temporal, which serves only to distract you from a union with the divine.

What is your earthly existence but a cloud of vapor, here for a while then gone. Store up those things which are eternal. Seek the divine nature to sit in the throne of your life. Let your heart be governed by the eternal flame of divine love, compassion, humility, patience, truth, justice, forgiveness, so your heart will be prepared for a union with the divine.

Originally posted by TheColdDragon
If I understand the question correctly, you're asking...

Is this the real life, or is it just fantasy?

I'd argue that we're all

Caught in a Landslide, with no escape from reality.

You should open your eyes, look up to the sky and see.

Sorry, couldn't resist.

XD.





Oke... life is real, it's very real. THe reality is that humans are a coincidence. I'm a coincidence. I never wanted to be born into this world.

Philisophicaly i would suppose this to be a troublesome and endlessly important aspect of our world. But when you get right down to the physical nitty gritty of it virtual or real our world is the one we've got the one we are adapted to and the one we would probably die or cease to exsist without.

Therefore it is in my very humble opinion that it matters not what the stuff our particular reality is made up of or contained within. What truley matters is how you choose to navigate your reality. Because like it or not your here tethered be it by a soul or physical principle its not a realm we can escape at least not with our physical bodies in tact.... Heres an interesting docu that comes to a conclusion that is right up your alley

Google Video Link

[edit on 25-12-2008 by constantwonder]

[edit on 25-12-2008 by constantwonder]

Originally posted by zephyrsCall me naive but what does it matter if life is an illusion if the illusion is so perfect that we believe it to be real? If the illusion's real enough for us to believe it's real, then for all intents and purposes, it is real.

Exactly my thoughts. If an illusion is so real that you cannot distinguish the illusion from reality, then that illusion is reality.

[edit on 26-12-2008 by GobbledokTChipeater]

If the illusion is perfect then so could be the experience of consiousness. In which case this would be as real as it could ever be...

I have no doubt that in reality the future will be vastly more surprising than anything I can imagine. Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose. -J. B. S. Haldane-