Facebook Page Is Dedicated to Seeing Faces in Random Visual Data

We are hard-wired to recognize faces in a sea of visual noise. It’s a smart survival tactic for a baby, but adults can be anywhere from amused to embarrassed by their own tendency to detect faces in random data.

The ones who are neither amused nor embarrassed — because they think that there’s divine meaning in the faces they see — are the hardcore people of faith who believe that God is sometimes moved to burn a picture of the Virgin Mary in a piece of toast, or that the Almighty, from time to time, sees fit to depict Jesus on a drop cloth, in bird shit, and so on.

The overall phenomenon is known as pareidolia or apophenia, and I just learned there’s a very entertaining Facebook page devoted to it, called Faces in Stuff.

This one made me laugh out loud:

And speaking of God spelled backwards, here’s a classic of the genre (hello, Jesus):

Do you see faces in inanimate objects? If you have striking examples, please share them in the comments.