Jesus on a Marmite Lid

Published on June 21, 2010

Or a grilled cheese sandwich?  Or a porch door? (Warning:  Do not continue reading if you're the casino owner who paid $28k for that sandwich!) Turns out there's a term for these sightings of faces or shapes in mundane objects:  Pareidolia.

Or a grilled cheese sandwich?  Or a porch door? (Warning:  Do not continue reading if you’re the casino owner who paid $28k for that sandwich!) Turns out there’s a term for these sightings of faces or shapes in mundane objects:  Pareidolia. David McRaney gets a little cynical about belief in things seen, writing:

Carl Sagan was one of the first scientists to suggest the reason for seeing faces where they aren’t is a survival mechanism.

In an environment like a jungle or a forest, you need only a few details of the face to fill in the rest and see another human being.

When people experience pareidolia in which they believe they can see a religious figure, it’s called simulacra.

It happens fairly often, and sometimes leads to fervor, like the water stain under a bridge in Chicago which has become a beloved shrine.

But we forgive him:  his site is tag-lined “a celebration of self-delusion”;  and he hasn’t yet explained the Sacramento Mary crying blood tears….

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