Key Aspects of Ultimate Reality (shaping people's world views)
      Certain aspects of Ultimate Reality are important to people around the world. The people's perceptions of these aspects influence how they think and behave. Huge variations in the people's perceptions of some of these important aspects are at the root of many of humanities problems. One obvious important aspect of Ultimate Reality involves the question of a god or gods and the nature of the god(s) and their interest(s) in people and their influence on people's lives. Extensive evidence of these gods is contained in many documents. Most of this evidence involves historical accounts of the effects the gods had on Earth. A body of evidence also indicates that Ultimate Reality does not include a god, and that people in the past believed in gods that we now know do not exist and were artificial creations of people's imaginations. The question of whether or not gods exist is obviously complicated and includes a huge amount of conflicting evidence and great uncertainty. People's perceptions about gods depend on which parts of the vast evidence they understand. Many understand only small parts of the evidence, so it is no wonder there is great disagreement in people's perceptions.

      Perceivable Truth is based on all this evidence and might be somewhat like the figure shows. Each color represents a particular view and the probability of that view being an accurate representation of Ultimate Reality. The black area represents the probability that none of the alternative views of gods is correct. The sum of the probabilities specified by all the colored areas plus the black area equals 100%. A realistic figure would require extensive study of all the competing alternative views in order to assign realistic probabilities.

      Over millenniums the evidence has been interpreted in many different ways, and many of the different alternative views had millions of adherents who were certain their view was correct. The conviction with which the people believed their views caused many problems including hatred of other people, wars, oppression, and the inability to question one's view. The tendency of people to be certain of the correctness of interpretations having obvious great uncertainty is a very important part of the evidence on which all Perceivable Truths are based. Unrealistic overconfidence in alternative views is a huge problem for our civilization. It causes distorted perceptions of reality that inhibit advancements in science, politics, religion, economics, and other parts of society.

      Implicit in the discussion of Perceivable Reality so far is the assumption that only one Ultimate Reality exists at any particular time - - past, present, or future. At any particular time at all locations in our universe and beyond when an infinitely fast signal sent from one location would instantly reach all other locations, there is just one configuration of all the mass-energy (and anything else) comprising Ultimate Reality. Ultimate Reality includes the history of the evolution of this mass-energy. The questions of whether or not multiple universes and dimensions other than three space and one time dimension exist are also key aspects of Ultimate Reality about which it is important to understand the approximate Perceivable Truth because they have a bearing on people's perceptions of reality. These and other important key aspects of Ultimate Reality shaping people's perceptions of reality are shown via the "Key Aspects" link below.