Humans and the art of self-delusion
One of the skills which differentiate humans from other species is the overactive brain which sees order and design where nothing exists. Our brains are designed to see human-like likenesses and forms wherever possible. Psychologists have used this to design Rorschach tests to understand a person’s personality characteristics and emotional functioning.
Scientists have traced our ability to perceive faces to a few key regions of the brain. Functional MRI, positron emission tomography, and other brain-imaging studies, for example, have shown that the fusiform gyri and the inferior temporal gyri light up when a person is shown pictures of faces, or objects resembling faces. Damage to the fusiform area, is known to give rise to prosopagnosia, a neurological disorder (more commonly known as “face blindness”) characterized by the inability to recognize faces. In 2010, Stanford neuroscientists Kalanit Grill-Spector and Kevin Weiner discovered two nerve clusters in the fusiform gyrus — dubbed pFus and mFus — that respond more strongly to faces than they do to inanimate objects or other body parts. By building on these findings, they’ve offered some of the most compelling evidence to date of the fusiform’s role in facial recognition.
In the latest issue of the Journal of Neuroscience, the researchers, with the assistance of neuroscientist Josef Parvizi, show that mild electrical stimulation of pFus and mFus caused a test subject’s perception of faces to be instantly distorted.
But an overactive brain can also lead to Pareidolia. This is something exploited by a worshiper. Let me illustrate through some photos.
Right from our early ancestors who looked at the sky, they had a fervent imagination, seeing animals and humans in star constellations. But they also did use these stars as maps to guide travel across long distances, way before compasses were invented. While Australian aborigines saw emus in the sky, the Greeks were able to see an entire zodiac with Leo, Pisces, Sagittarius, Aries, Scorpio and so on. Surprisingly, there are still people silly enough to forecast the future using these outdated zodiac signs.
Some of the fantastic remnants of imagination from the past:
Let us have some fun.
Is this an image designed by an elephant god?
Did the creator know that Monkey King 3 would be released right when the earth was created?
Do you see the Monkey King?
Did Mars Rover find out a statue of a Martian God who is uncannily similar to earth gods? Wait, why does it look like an earthly woman?
Some more faces for the face finding maniac inside us:
Is that Lincoln?
Old man of the mountain, New Hampshire:
An ogre with special effects: Enhanced by a lunar eye iris and some cloud breath.
Is that a real horse inside the horsehead nebula? But I also see a headless human torso walking
The Cone Nebula (now called the Jesus Nebula) was not spared. I thought I saw a person in prayer, but a believer saw something else and added more detail so that none miss it. This was enough proof to turn a publisher of astronomical photos from skeptic to believer.
It is not just Amazon in the cloud.
Someone says this is an angel for sure, because it ain't God. Hopefully not trembling in anger at the photographer’s stupidity.
The next 2 more resemble the Motherland calls statue more than Jesus. But similarity is unlikely to dissuade the believer.
Here is the original
This is no coincidence. Or is it.
Forget the stationary gods, now let move to some action in the clouds
The Chilean god seems to be a normal person, maybe running from human stupidity
But what is Skeletor doing in a flower? When did he turn God?
Now let us move on some more proof from worshippers who have found the ultimate proof of the supreme being.
God in a shell?
Am I seeing 2 horns? Never mind what I saw, someone saw a business opportunity here.
Someone made 2000 dollars of this.
20000 visitors to see this miracle
More Indian bread:
I can't trust my eyes
And the ultimate god (only to Elvis believers):
On a more serious note, if this is the state of human behavior and hysteria in the 20th century, it is not difficult to understand how people interacted and spread rumors 2000 years before. It is easy for charlatans to spread misinformation, citing magic and the supernatural. Problems begin when people are mixing facts and gobbledegook. The famous “Face in Mars” was revealed to be an optical illusion. A UFO fan just died.
In reality, the Mars Global Surveyor did take a higher resolution (14 meter) photo of the same mountain, from a different angle. Here is a portion of that picture.
Let me end with Mother Teresa, who would have none of this BS. When a coffee house found an image of her (fondly called the nun bun) and started making money from it. They generated hundreds of media interviews and a million pagehits in 1997, when the internet was in its infancy. This is probably among the first “broke the internet” story. Mother Teresa sued the organization saying “My legal counsel . . . has written asking you to stop, and now I am personally asking you to stop”. Maybe she hated the caricature or maybe she thought people were stupid, but who knows. She carried that information to her grave. The Church on the other hand, has not stopped deifying her and elevated her to sainthood, after her death. Maybe the nun bun had the final laugh. It may have been still around, attracting the faithful, until it was stolen (probably by a hardcore believer).
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