We’ve all experienced pareidolia — we see elephants in the clouds or Jesus on a marmite lid — but rational folks realize it’s just our brains grasping for patterns.
And then there are the religious nutballs, who think that sewer stains on a wall is Jesus revealing himself.
Why does this happen? David McRaney explains:
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.
Recent advances in brain imagery have made it possible to explore why this happens.
When people see faces, it takes far less time (as in milliseconds) for the ventral fusiform cortex to register it recognizes something meaningful.
When people are shown objects which sort-of look like faces, that same part of the brain indicates recognition at almost the same speed.
It doesn’t take much to create a face either. It can sometimes just be a little punctuation. ; )
Read the whole thing and you’ll get to experience a grotesque upside-down picture of George W Bush.
A REASON that we are hardwired this way too is that it may have assisted in survival. Just think, the person that thinks they saw something and reacts to it, may get a lot of false alarms, but when there is a danger (like a predator) will have a better chance to get away and breed. Those who don’t see anything, and don’t react, may in the end get eaten by the predator, and not reproduce.
Imagine that, non-rational behaviour being an evolutionary strength at one time. No wonder we’re so messed up as a species! And it does go to show that as far as evolution is concerned, there isn’t really a plan aside from breeding. We don’t always get better as so many people think (in other words, people are generally still ignorant about evolution).
This is exactly what’s described in the previous thread: “Michael Shermer: The pattern behind self-deception”.
In the title picture of this blog, I can see in the clouds….a very popular and bothersome(which one isn’t!) tele-evangelist getting oral sex from a man in a toilet stall at an airport! We fabricate from nature what we really want to see…..go figure!
Pareidolia is my favorite of the irrational things people believe. Surprisingly, not that many people know what it is, which is a shame because the world would be a better more rational place if people did. Awesomenes.
Kriss
Marmite blech…
That picture with this blog! I can see Him! He looks like a very pissed-off, bound and gagged Jesus with half his beard shaved off. He’s just been told “get us on the horn to God or we’ll shave the other half of your beard off. And that’s just for starters!”
Look like a pile of feaces in front of a face. It will never happen in bovril’s cap.
Lemmy, obviously
Maybe this is just my pareidolia talking but I’m pretty sure that’s Frank Zappa.
I enjoy how people find these images (like a cheeto shaped like Jesus) and then try to sell it.
I remember one Christmas morning as a child/preteen/teen?, we had opened the back door to get the paper (probably?) and there was a form frosted on the storm door window in the shape of Mary holding an infant Jesus. Now we are not religious people, but the shape, kind of a blob really, the “significance” of the day, etc. was kind of creepy.
What it turned out to be was the condensation formed within the wreath on the door to make a head and the rest of the “body” was normal condensation beneath it spreading out to the edges like shoulders and a body, the infant, I think where the bow of the wreath made a mark. I think I am using the word condensation correctly. It’s weird how a blobby frost on the window was “filled in” with information regarding the day that it happened, Christmas, and that we happened to open the door that day — when it’s cold enough, it’s there every day, we had just never noticed before. My whole family saw it and saw the same shape and recognized the bare resemblance to a holy figure initially. Why Mary and not just a person? Because it was Christmas.
I do like to see faces in things, but usually not so much too literally in clouds and tree bark and drips of paint as things like houses, fronts of cars, and some furniture that just has symmetry and face-like features, a pair of eyes and a funny mouth.
If the ocassion makes us think we see what we hope to see(ie Christmas, Easter), has anybody ever seen Jesus, Mary or the infant Jesus in a bath house, swingers club, strip joint? The next stigmata that occurs in a strip joint, I’ll pay to go and see it!
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Scientists not immune to pareidolia:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-news/7833070/Michelangelo-hid-anatomical-sketches-in-Sistine-Chapel-in-Church-attack.html
I have read about this before — the thing is, it’s art, not an accidental formation in a tree bark or water stain. How do you know the anatomical forms weren’t intentional?
I don’t. Just like I don’t know there’s a teapot circling the moon. It’s up to the people making the assertion to prove. BTW it’s possible to see things in works of art that the artist did not intend.
Jah. English teachers are strong proof of this. I had one who could find Death (symbolism, motif, theme, ect) in everything… and did.
I know without some corroborating evidence such as a journal account or some admission at some point on the part of Michaelangelo that he did in fact plant anatomical structures in his art, there is no way to know for sure that’s what he did. I also know that people can see forms in art that aren’t really there intentionally.
I’m given to believe that painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel was a little tedious at times, and given Michaelangelo’s genius, he probably was not just painting what he was supposed to and contemplated alternate interests. It must be at least a little rough being commissioned to do a work of art not to inject some subtle messages and make what it is go beyond what it looks like. That may be intentional or perhaps letting his mind wander somewhat, recognizable shapes of other things appeared unintentionally, but subconsciously.
Another idea I just made up, and being at least a little artistic myself, painting out a rough sketch of a realistic object can be difficult without a reference to other forms. Everyone knows what a face looks like, but it’s hard to paint or draw a face just going by vision or memory of a whole face. You kind of have to deconstruct exactly what you see or you will fill in with what you know and it will not look realistic. In a similar way, maybe he thought ‘this part resembles a brain’ so he sketched out a brain and then transformed it into a person, rather than the other way around, where it’s a person and observers also see a hidden shape of a brain.
There’s really no way of knowing for sure that while no one was looking, he wasn’t drawing brains and other anatomical forms, and covered it over with what he was supposed to make, though. It’s interesting trivially, and no doubt whatever he meant to do, he’s a genius.
I wrote a longer response that got eaten by the web gremlin. Basically I said I need more proof. Michaelangelo’s anatomy studies generally do not deal with internal organs. He was more interested in musculature and bone structure. Unlike Leonardo, who was also a scientist, Mich had no practical use for knowledge about the structure of the brain. No use for brains. No use for brains.
Whew! Glad to get that in before losing connection again.
My dogs’ ass is the Virgin Mary………..