Page 652 - Atlas of Creation Volume 4

is our different ways of perceiving the concept of color. Something we are cer-

tain is “green” being perceived as “grey” by another party does not show that
either one is mistaken. We can never know who is right and who is wrong, be-
cause both individuals have individual perceptions, and we have no means of

conducting comparisons and testing the true reality. Green perception and
grey perception are both individuals’ personal experiences, the validity of
which is again based on those individuals’ interpretation.
We need to realize that all the properties we ascribe to objects and other pe-
ople actually belong to images in our brains, not to the “originals” in the outsi-

de world. Since we can never step outside of our own perceptions and re- An image of flowers seen
through the human eye
ach the outside reality, we can never perceive the true existence of matter,
of colors, much less of the universe as a whole.

The famous 18th-century philosopher Bishop George Berkeley drew atten-
tion to this fact:

If the same things can be red and hot for some and the contrary for others, this
means that we are under the influence of misconceptions and that "things" only
exist in our brains. 41

Oxford University’s Gerard O’Brien, working at the University of Adelaide
in Australia, said this in a radio talk:

Now when we look out into the world, we see objects as coloured. We think tho- Bees see the same flowers

se colours are actually attached to all the objects that we see. But now there is a like this.
very interesting question as to whether that is the case. . . . It might turn out—and
there are a number of philosophers who argue—that the colours that we experi-
ence, those colour properties are in fact only features of our internal representation of the world, that there are

no corresponding colours in the world itself. And so the world outside our heads, the world independent of

650 Atlas of Creation Vol. 4