The persistence of religion illustrates what happens when perception replaces reality. Reality is real, yes, but what you perceive is not necessarily reality.
[but what you perceive is not necessarily reality]
Exactly.
In decades, I never have met a “perception is reality” guy who wasn’t sporting a $30+ haircut, pressed shirts, manicured and who wasn’t as trustworthy as Barack Hussein Obama.
Which is exactly why that clown never passed the smell test to me 24 hours after seeing him in action and looking even 1/4” beneath the surface.
“Reality is real, yes, but what you perceive is not necessarily reality.”
Reminds me of that awful movie, “Short Circuit.” Airhead mistakes robot for alien, and how does she react? “I knew you’d contact me.”
She alone among all of humanity is so special that aliens making contact with humanity would choose her for first contact.
God communicates with people. He reveals his existence to people fairly often. Nobody knows how often because people are often very reluctant to discuss it. Pearls before swine, and all that.
There are a lot of people who refuse to accept even the possibility of such a thing. Most of them have no grounds to reject this a priori except their conviction that if God hasn’t spoken to wonderful, intelligent, perceptive them, then He surely hasn’t spoken to anyone.