My Pareidolia Has Produced a Miracle!

Recently, I shared my blessing with you of Jesus showing himself to me in a picture in my dining room of pond scum on a creek. I was amazed at your lack of Faith. No one else saw Jesus but me. But that did not deter me! I knew I had a Genuine Miracle in my presence. So I prayed and waited for the Blessings to start rolling in. (and by pray, I mean I sarcastically blogged about it and then promptly forgot about it)

Well here's a big one! My dear husband Butch got a job! He had one but he was offered a better one. Which means he was able to quit the old one that he hated. God always provides!

Of course, my confirmation bias sees the recent pareidolia from August 31 and Butch being offered a job a week later as being magically related. And of course, I have (conveniently) forgotten that Butch had just applied for the job (his mundane, human actions), that he had been looking for a job for quite a few months, and that he had the requisite skills gleaned over many years of hard work to attract the new employer.

In other words, Butch took all the boring, time consuming steps needed to get hired. But I don't have to think about his intelligence, technical skills, people skills and persistence. No, of course not. I just know that Jesus provided through my Faith and Devotion.

Ugh, I think I just threw up in my mouth a little. First, it's incredibly insulting to Butch to ignore all of  his efforts to pin all the accolades on Jesus, an invisible, evidence-free friend who gets all the glory when things go well, and never gets blamed when bad stuff happens.

That is really the evil genius of religion. Whoever first came up with that slick bit of mind-twisting psychology obviously skyrocketed to the top of the game. Heads Jesus wins; Tails you lose. But Jesus loves you and will give you rewards after you are dead. Of course, you'll be dead so you will never know if you wasted your life in servitude for a bucket of lies.  Oh, and don't forget, if you don't love Jesus, he will make you burn in hell forever and ever. How can you pass this deal up?

Oh, you need evidence. I see. That's against the rules. God says you have to have faith. See how I move the goalposts so it always goes my way? Pretty sneaky, aren't I? It's evil genius, playing off of our human weaknesses. Brilliant!

I've Been Blessed With a Miracle!

So I was sitting at my dining room table at 8:42 pm on Wednesday, August 31, 2011 when I looked up at a photograph I have had hanging there for about 5 years. And LO! Jesus appeared before me in all his Heavenly Glory! I took a picture to share this Blessing with you:

Can you see Him? It's much more obvious in person than it is in this humble picture. I was struck by His holy presence and stopped to pray to him in all his Glory. Ok, actually I didn't actually pray. But I sort of chuckled at the pareidolia.

Since He's being coy in this image, I have slightly enhanced the natural image just for the sake of helping you see this Divine Miracle:

Now, can you see him?! I thought so! What an amazing blessing! I mean, here I am, a blasphemous godless heathen, and I see Jesus in a picture that I've looked at for 5 years. By the way my husband's cousin gave us this photograph which is his original work. It's a picture of pond scum on a creek. How apropos!

Ok, I was just playing with the second image, but I did see him in the photograph. I've talked about pareidolia on HDC in the past, so you should be familiar with the phenomena, which is extremely common: it is the imagined perception of a pattern or meaning where it does not actually exist.

What I found very interesting was that when I first looked up the other day and saw the face, I immediately thought it looked like Jesus. But that made me think, how the hell does anyone today think they know what Jesus looked like? Why do we all see him as looking like a surfer dude out of the Renaissance, with sandy blond, long hair, a full beard, etc?

Wouldn't Jesus actually look Arabic, with dark features and black hair? And why do we always see the same basic vague head and shoulders shape as Mary? How many countless millions or billions of Middle Eastern women, or nuns, have worn the same type of cloak? Only every woman in a burka. And every nun in a habit. But for some reason we all have this idealized idea of what this woman looked like and that affects how we perceive patterns in random noise.

But, now that I've seen him, I can't unsee him. The recognition of a human face in the random pattern of pond scum in the picture is stuck in my head as the classically accepted face of Jesus Christ, Son of God.

And this brings up the most important issue. That of miracles. We all know when images of Jesus or Mary appear, the Miracles start to happen around them. So I figure I had better keep an eye out for them. I think that they start once the image is recognized by one special person (who has their patternicity turned up). That makes sense, right? I mean, maybe the image of Jesus wasn't even in the picture all these years, and now that he has imbued the pond scum with his presence, I think I can expect some good changes in my life.

Do I get three wishes? Do I have to create a shrine? I really don't have the space for a shrine and I hate incense. I will be sure to let you know when the miracles start.

I suppose the first one would be that I should turn into a True Believer. But I'd prefer cash, if I get to put in for my three wishes.

An Open Letter To Christians After The Arizona Shooting

We've all probably heard about the awful shooting in Arizona this past Saturday. My friend Edmund Metheny wrote an open letter to Christians and others in a note on Facebook. I liked it so much I asked him if I could share it with you and he agreed. So here it is, in its entirety:

To my Christian friends - and others

by Edmund Metheny

Since the shootings in Arizona, I have read numerous comments regarding the miraculous nature of the event. It was a "miracle" that Gabrielle Giffords survived, for example. I have read comments such as "God didn't do it, but he can turn a tragedy into a blessing if you just look, and take the time to see." I have even read comments to the effect that this evil only occurred because of a lack of faith in God.

I would like to provide you with an alternate viewpoint.

A miraculous event is not "a bunch of people got shot and some of them died and some of them lived." A miraculous event is "all the shooter's bullets turned into butterflies" or maybe "the shooter was struck dead by a bolt of lightning from a clear sky, just as he pulled the gun out" or "two she-bears appeared from nowhere and ripped the shooter to pieces." If the best that God can manage for a miracle in this case is six dead and fourteen injured, that is a weak-assed, pathetic loser miracle, and He should be ashamed.

What made this event less horrible than it might have been was not God - it was people. Heroic people who prevented the shooter from reloading. Heroic people who provided aid at the scene. Heroic people who worked tirelessly and quickly to give medical care to the injured. And it wasn't prayer that saved the injured. If prayer was going to do it, don't you think maybe someone could have done a bit more for Christina Taylor Green? Perhaps another verse of "Jesus loves the little children" might have done it?

God Is Either Evil Or Incompetent... Or Nonexistent

I was trying to explain to someone recently about the "Why Won't God Heal Amputees" argument. For privacy's sake, I won't talk about what she said, but I did end up with the following questions and arguments of my own.

This is one of those topics where atheists and believers are never going to be in the same book, never mind on the same page. Here is what I think about it.

God answers prayers every day for football players catching touchdown passes, for people finding their keys, for people being miraculously healed of cancer, for people spontaneously being cured of diseases who go to Lourdes. Mary and Jesus show themselves in toast, stains on walls, in bird poop, in window glass streaks. Every day, miracles happen.

But they are only ever events that could happen statistically. They never break the laws of physics, they never break the natural laws of the universe. Sure, it's very rare for someone to have a spontaneous remission in their cancer. But it does happen. It's improbable, not impossible. So it will happen in time.

But God never performs a miracle that is impossible. It's impossible for a limb to regrow on a human. But lizards do it all the time. Why would God let lizards regrow a tail and not some poor girl who had her leg cut off in a tribal war? Or because she was called a witch in Ghana? Or why can't a war hero, if he and his whole family pray hard enough, let him grow his arm back that he lost defending his country?

God is omnipotent, omniscient and all loving. But I've heard from christians many times that God follows his own rules. But why? He's God. Why doesn't he ever answer any really tough prayers? Why only the easy ones and the ones that are statistically improbable but not impossible? Why doesn't he ever cure someone who has prayed fervently to be cured of something like AIDs or cerebral palsy? Because that's impossible.

I Believe In Miracles

Damn, now that song is going through my head. Who was that? Butch says it was Wild Cherry, but don't hold me to it. Anyway, my friend Eric sent me a link to Michael Shermer's site, to a page titled Miracle on Probability Street. He wrote it in 2004 but I thought I'd share it with you because it's very good information.

We've all experienced a highly improbable event in our lives. Probably many, in fact. Some of us more than others, some more seemingly improbable than others. There is such a thing as the Law of Large Numbers that explains these coincidences and "miracles".

The Law of Large Numbers simply stated (sans math): with a large enough sample many odd coincidences are likely to happen.

Coincidence: an occasion when two or more similar things happen at the same time, especially in a way that is unlikely and surprising.

Miracle: an unusual and mysterious event that is thought to have been caused by a god, or any very surprising and unexpected event.

~

On a side note, I was disappointed with Dictionary.com's listing on these words so I thought I'd go to the Cambridge Dictionary. The definition above is from the Dictionary of British English. Out of curiosity, I looked up the word miracle in the Cambridge Dictionary of American English:

Miracle: an unusual and mysterious event that is thought to have been caused by God, or any surprising and unexpected event.

A very subtle but telling difference! I think I'll be using the British version from now on.

How Far I've Come!

Last week, I ran some errands with Butch. One of them involved me waiting for him to take a test which he thought was going to be a half hour. It turned out that it was an hour and a half, which was actually good considering they had 3 hours allotted.

I was bored out of my mind after about 12 minutes of sitting in the car, and started to find ways to occupy myself. I got out and wandered around to look at all the different lichens on the trees, but I didn't have enough light to get any decent pictures. I paced , looking at ants, then sat in the car and read my book for awhile, tried not to think about how much Monster energy drink I had consumed on the way there, and let my mind generally wander around. It was excruciating. :P

At one point I noticed that there was a decorative wall that had the top knocked off, around a little flower garden near the front doors (which were locked so I couldn't go in and get rid of the huge amount of Monster now making me miserable). Next to it were lots of bits of broken concrete, but among them, like a shining miracle, was a smooth brown river stone. I picked it up and thought how lucky I was to find something so wonderful in all that chaos.

Miracle: An event that appears inexplicable by the laws of nature and so is held to be supernatural in origin or an act of god.

[caption id="attachment_1867" align="alignleft" width="331" caption="Neece holding the Miracle Rock"][/caption]

Of course, I was just being silly. It was just a misplaced stone from another flower bed, but I was thinking how easily it is to see something that stands out as somehow special or miraculous. I slipped it in my pocket with a smirk. My sacred touch with the divine (NOT!). It reminded me of the way people see patterns in randomness and claim it to be divine, such as the magical stump and the magical bird shit. It's really nothing more than pareidolia.

Back in the car, waiting patiently, I glanced up at the rear view mirror and saw a sticker that I had put there probably 10 years ago. Now, in the 10 years that we've had this car, this is the only sticker I've ever put on it that was not practical. We have the registration stickers, and the oil change one, but no bumper stickers except this one, which I had placed there because it meant so much to me back then. I wanted to see it every time I got in the car. I wanted to be reminded of this message, which was:

The Universe arranges itself to accommodate your picture of reality!

Now, if you read HDC regularly, I'm sure you are aware that this is utter pseudoscience bullshit. It is completely and totally wrong and anyone who holds this as truth is crazy. I was crazy back then. I believed that thoughts were powerful and could help shape the universe. I was wrapped up in a lot of "spiritual" thinking that was completely bogus.

It was easy to selectively enforce those beliefs back then though. To me, this statement was accurate. It never occurred to me how ridiculous and nonsensical it was. I was a believer in "energy" and a conscious universe (even though I was an agnostic).

So as I sat there, I was amazed at how far I've come over the years. I now embrace science, reason, skepticism and logic, which to me, is much more rewarding, and certainly more consistent and satisfying than the desperate beliefs that were based on nothing more substantial than wishful thinking.

Holy Shit! A "Miracle" From The Heavens!

So, I'm far from original, but the title of this article is so appropriate. The blessed virgin mary of guadalupe has appeared! All hail mother mary! Of course, she's here to share a miracle (miracle yet to be noticed) and she wants us to pay attention... to the bird shit on this truck.

"As soon as I looked at it, it just gave me chills all over my body!"