It is quite often, and quite normal, that humans can and will believe something they know to be inherently false. There is (or, was) a yahoo group set up for this very same phenomenon:

As a novice ventriloquist, the aim for all my performances will be to induce that very phenomenon. I know that from what professional ventriloquists tell me. I know that from reading about the history of ventriloquism, when ancient medicine men and witch doctors convinced their audiences that gods were talking to them from out of a fire, from out of a cave's mouth, from out of their own bellies, up in trees or clouds, or whatever location for gods happened to be most convenient at the time of those events. I know that from reading about the history of religion, from interacting with avowed religious people, and from listening with care to meanings hidden within their own kind of reasoning.

I know that, during a performance, each and every person in an audience, of any mentality at all, knows a ventriloquist's wooden or cloth partner cannot speak, fart or laugh, but that the illusion must be maintained by an expert performance of self-control and manipulation. Everyone who will watch the movie, "The Ten", will know the figure is not really having sex with Winona Ryder, but they will accept the illusion for the duration of watching that event. Watch yourself get taken in by the figure in "The Dummy", or any cartoon characters you may enjoy viewing (not only in movies or on TV, but also those political cartoons and strips you can find in your newspapers).

 Here is a case where an understanding of the word 'illusion' is important: In an illusion, persons with the capacity to understand what's going on know what their perceptions tell them is an illusion. A 'delusion' is when they, in spite of whatever their mental status may be, believe what is presented to them in spite of what their senses may tell them, and in spite of plenty of evidence to the contrary. In a delusion, a contra-reality is formed by the mind that accepts it as real in spite of all evidence to the contrary, including absence of supporting evidence. That, too, is the biblical description of faith as practiced by those who proclaim themselves religious and who have taken others at their word to buy into a contra reality world view.

We share an illusion that matter is solids, liquids, vapors, gasses, but we also remain aware of the particles assembled into each state of existence, and that those particles are assembled from one-dimensional items called 'strings'. We are not deluded in that respect. We can infer many states of reality from what actually constitutes matter. Those inferences do not lead to a supernatural state, since everything can be explained before arriving at that, and since nothing in Nature points toward that except by acts of desperate mental gymnastics and permanent suspension of disbelief; that is, insanity or religion.

Hence, the supernatural is not a conclusion, it is a belief resultant from illusions that ancient priests concocted and tribesmen shared as delusions: they did not know the basis for their suspension of disbelief, and so accepted that contra reality, the gods and other vestiges of the supernatural, were part of reality. Those are the people who share what grew into a SYSTEM OF BELIEFS built from false precepts induced by original examples of suspension of disbelief. The witch doctors (they had/have all kinds of titular names) most likely had to concoct such belief systems by adding to the illusion/delusion whenever skepticism reared up, to protect themselves from revenge killings by an enraged tribe who discovered how it had been duped.

So, at times, yes, we do temporarily believe in things we know to be untrue: We all watch movies, read stories, and listen to little children's tales and (for that span of time) believe while knowing the difference. It is a fun thing to do that sometimes amazes us when somebody demonstrates an excellent talent. We believe, knowing it is an illusion. We believe in the hardness of a rock, knowing we can demonstrate that hardness, and also knowing of the illusion. We can believe that a span of time has passed, all the while aware of the illusion, one so contagious as to involve every modern human being in our world (there remain a few cultures that do not recognize the illusion). We believe in the value of money, all the well aware it is the illusion of value that is so important we have learned to create equations to convert it into other illusions of value, such as time, desirable objects, physical effort, or entertainment. We believe in distances to the point where we rely on the illusion, use it to make calculations, and have even learned to translate into terms of another illusion ("It is only three minutes from here to downtown.")

 Whether you want to call it all memeplexes, contra reality beliefs, or religion, just remember there is more to it than at first meets the eye. We have not even touched on linguistics here, an important study in which the radically religious are far ahead of their secular opponents, at least at learning to understand and apply such forceful knowledge.

Copyright ©2007 by Lloyd Harrison Whitling. All rights reserved.