Pareidolatry<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A cute cartoon from People in White Coats. Is this blasphemy, or a miracle - or can it be both? While I probably would have shared it just for the punny\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2015\/05\/pareidolatry.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Pareidolatry\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A cute cartoon from People in White Coats. Is this blasphemy, or a miracle - or can it be both? 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{"id":28686,"date":"2015-05-04T09:44:45","date_gmt":"2015-05-04T13:44:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/exploringourmatrix\/?p=28686"},"modified":"2015-05-04T09:44:45","modified_gmt":"2015-05-04T13:44:45","slug":"pareidolatry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2015\/05\/pareidolatry.html","title":{"rendered":"Pareidolatry"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

$\"ProphetToast\"$ <\/p>\n

A cute cartoon from People in White Coats<\/a>. Is this blasphemy, or a miracle \u2013 or can it be both?<\/p>\n

While I probably would have shared it just for the punny title (mashing together pareidolia and idolatry),\u00a0there is a serious point worth reflecting on \u2013 and not just about our human penchant to see patterns where none have been intentionally created.<\/p>\n

Religious traditions tend to view the miraculous claims of other religious traditions as blasphemous. Mary appearing? Blasphemous to most Protestants. Gabriel appearing to Muhammad? Blasphemous to many Christians. Jesus dying and rising again? Blasphemous to Muslims.<\/p>\n

And so the truth is that\u00a0claims to the miraculous do not settle matters for most religious believers. Claims that conflict with one\u2019s own tradition are dismissed as legends or lies or demonic deceptions.<\/p>\n

And yet\u00a0unless one is willing to take seriously similar criticisms of one\u2019s own tradition\u2019s claims about miracles, it would seem that one should be careful about making such criticisms of others.<\/p>\n

Something about\u00a0throwing blasphemous stones in miraculous houses\u2026<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"