Ah yes, one of the things which I was also thinking about when I at first discovered that atoms are mostly empty space. One analogy which I found to be pretty good is that in solids, atoms are first of all very close together and dense, kind of stringed together in a pattern which makes them resistance to change in shape. But the electrons of the atoms move around very quickly (I know that electrons do not move in pretty circles around the nucleus of atoms, but that they occupy a space around the nucleus called the orbital, which is a zone calculated using probability, that is, where the electron is most likely to appear at any given time). If you look at a fan (like one you use to push air towards you in a warm room) which is turned off it, it has some blades used to push the air, but most of the space around it is actually empty, you can push your arm or finger through the blades. But when the fan is turned on, the blades move so quickly that you can't really push anything through them (and it might hurt a lot to try and do so

). When you push your finger down onto the table and try to push it through, the reason it can't move through it is because the electrons in your finger and the electrons in the table rebel each other with such a strong force that you are unable to penetrate it.
But if you look at it from this perspective, I do agree that something like the perception of touch is kind of an illusion in the sense that nothing might actually touch each other, but that touch is the feeling you get from the electrical signals send through your nervous system from your finger when these repelling forces of the electrons meet, but that your finger does not literally touch anything when it comes down on the table, the force you experience is not literal touch, but repulsion from electrons. Is this what you mean when talking about illusion?
If you look at perception like this, I would think that is why you reached the conclusion that reality is whatever you can experience using your five senses? So for example, if you experience pain in a dream, who is to say it's not as real as it would have been in waking life, since the two would have been perceived in exactly the same way; ultimately nothing but electrical signals. In this case, reality would have the meaning of being everything you can sense.
And in that case, I do understand your point, and the reason why we had a disagreement was simply because I defined reality through other means, that is, not perception, but more of the fact that our wakening world seems to be permanent, while our dream worlds do not (which is why people like to try committing crimes in a dream, but not in our wakening life).
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