Jesus is back … again. And this time, he’s on a piece of fried chicken. As first reported by WNEP, Ernesto Hernandez from Pocono Summit, Pennsylvania did what any of us would do at a moment of sudden spiritual significance - he got out his cell phone and snapped a photo. Ah, modernity.
Personally, I tend to see Ian Anderson whenever people claim they see Jesus in a piece of chicken, or a grilled cheese sandwich, or an oil stain on a window, or within the bark of a tree, or in a dog turd, and so forth. Born and raised Jewish, and growing up a Jethro Tull fan just about explains it all in my case. My brain interprets a random image, and “draws” a face for me which I am most familiar with, because it fits a pattern for me. Hence the aptly named phenomena called “Pattern Recognition”, or more specifically when seeing faces in random objects, pareidolia. As Steven Novella once described:
“People like patterns. More specifically, we have a need to feel a sense of control over ourselves and our world, a perceived prerequisite to control is understanding, and we seek patterns in order to make sense of the world. As a result we tend toward hyperactive pattern recognition.”
Of course there is no reporting of pareidolia in the article, you have to go to the comments to find mention of the phenomena (media fail, no big surprise there.) People’s brains make faces out of all sorts of things, an exercise which dates back to when we are babies. For survival sake, it is important for an infant to recognize their mother, father, grandmother, and others in their “tribe” or family. So is it any wonder that our brains have a predisposition to seeing faces in all sorts of objects?
In the case of this piece of fried chicken, one might argue that Jesus has finally come home to roost.
November 28, 2014 8:14 AM
