Pareidolia

From SkepticWiki

Pareidolia is the well described and near universal tendency of humans to see faces and other images in rock formations, tree stumps, images of Mars and the Earth taken from spacecraft, dirty windows, dry and wet rot, cloud formations, toast and tortillas, smoke from burning buildings, portraits on currency, shower curtains and random data of all kinds and at all scales.

We humans are programmed by evolution to recognise faces from our very earliest days (usually our parents) and then our siblings, friends, neighbours etc. This facility of our brains is very important but like other parts of human observation can be fooled or deceived into seeing facial images in random data.

Early in the life of the JREF forum, for example, we had a poster who claimed to be able to photograph demons in his basement. This turned out to be pictures of white noise coming from a faulty web camera looking over Loch Ness. But in the pictures this person could see pictures of leering demons. I had a look myself and could see a snake and the face of a gorilla amongst other things.

The key part of this phenomenon is not that people can see images of something but that they see images of religious figures (Jesus, the Virgin Mary and so on) or other significant faces (like Elvis) whom people revere.

[edit] Examples

There are many, many examples of this phenomenon, which we shall list as links for your edification:

• Picture of Jesus in a Peruvian sand dune
• The Face on Mars [1]
• A badly cooked pancake in the shape of a praying figure
• Satan's face at the World Trade Center
• "Subliminal images" in picture advertisements
• Jesus in wood,
• Jesus on toast
• God on a dorito
• Jesus in burl wood
• Jesus on a seashell
• Satan on a wallet
• Jesus in granite,
• Virgin and child in a chinese noodle
• Jesus in the clouds

[edit] Comments

"The next time someone tells me that evolution is a religion, I'm going to point out that never in the history of science has someone looked in a petri dish, seen an image of Darwin in the culture, and called a local news station to do a story on it.

Believers see God, His Mother, His servants, and His Beard, and His name spelled out in pancakes, wood grain, grilled cheese sandwiches, paint stains, cow hides, subway walls, salt stains, and thousands of other places."

-Ladewig[2]

[edit] References

The Skeptics Dictionary on Pareidolia

Wikipedia on Pareidolia