I'm staring at that thing, and all I see is some cracks in a flood-damaged wall.
The church was flooded by Hurricane Katrina; causing some drywall in the building to buckle into an image that church members believe is an image of Jesus on the cross.
Touching it causes miracles, they say—the blind see (or, at least, the myopic think their vision is a little better), kidneys start working (maybe), but the most important miracle of all is…
Church leaders say it really doesn't matter if you believe any of the testimonials about people being healed. But what is a fact, is that more and more people are coming to the church everyday.
…the church's bottom line is improved! Hallelujah! And the new church members are all natural-born suckers! Pass the collection plate!
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Uuuuuhh... All I see is a sort of minimalist drawing of one of those Lego Piraka things.
This is what comes from too much masturbiblation.
"This is what comes from too much masturbiblation."
That makes sense - isn't it supposed to make you go blind? So there you go, you start to become unable to detect randomness in wallpaper water damage...
I have to say, amongst all the "miracle" objects that have been "found" over the last few years - the tortilla, the cheese pizza, the toast - this one is by far the least convincing on the pictoral aspect alone.
Maybe God should stick with images in food...
If you look closely, right above Jesus' head there are letters: looks like "F E M A _ S U..." (but I can't make out the rest).
"Drywall Jesus" would be a good name for a contracting business.
Or a rock band.
I see the face and upper body of a goat-man. That's right, one of Satan's minions right there on the church wall.
To me, it looks like a uterus with a couple of Fallopian tubes visible, and the ovaries cropped out of the photo.
Maybe it really means "Grrrrlllll power!"
Here's another miracle for you.
Woman Missing Since She Was 14 Is Found
MCKEESPORT, Pa. - For 10 years, Tanya Nicole Kach says she was told that her parents didn't want her, that she was stupid and no one cared about her but the middle school security guard who was keeping her in his home.
It took her a decade to build the confidence to come forward, but on Wednesday she finally learned the truth as she hugged her father, Jerry Kach, in a tearful reunion.
...
Kach's father, Jerry, said, "I just say thank you, there is a God and he brought my little girl back home."
God can be quite a rascal, I suppose.
My daughter's former apartment in New Orleans had a perfect image of Frank Zappa on the living room wall made entirely of Katrina-inspired Aspergillum niger. "Drywall" wasn't a very accurate description by the time we got there to clean up, though.
Surely I have that photo here somewhere..........
I think it's really Jesus. He's saying," Sorry I'm late. Did anything happen while I was out?"
I can make out the star constellation Orion, if I stare at it long enough. Mostly, I just see cracks, though.
Ktesibios, great observation - he was a carpenter after all.
Wassamatter with you people? It's the sacred squid, and its tentacles are outstretched! It loves us THIS much!
I see a tortilla.
"Many have been healed," said Pastor Ella Roberts. "One young man that belonged here was scheduled to go on dialysis. "The next week, he laid his hand there on the wall on the image, went to the doctor and they said they can't see where, why, how."
Ah, the good ole fill-in-the-blank with your imagination miracle! My bet is he's on dialysis right now.
And it looks kind of like jeebus was decapitated. I don't remember that part of the story.
CNN published some better photos of the wall, including this one where he wall has been obliquely lit from above, and it actually is kind of more convincing.
More remarkably snarkiness from the echo chamber.
The definitive send-up of "Image of Jesus" hysteria is the Nancy White song "Jesus at Tim's". Can't find the lyrics online, but there's a sound-clip here:
http://www.musicoutfitter.com/store/item/773958114722/stickersonfruit.h…
(Note: to really appreciate the joke, you need to understand the status of the Tim Horton's chain as a Canadian cultural icon).
Phil Plait's remarkable shower-curtain Lenin is the standard by which I judge all other pareidolia.
http://www.badastronomy.com/pix/lenin/face_440_hilite_inset.jpg
Gee, I need to pay more attention to the cracks in the walls at my church. Maybe we could pay for that new boiler, hmmm???
Nah, we E-piskies don't work that way. But the cracks are more interesting than most sermons I hear.
Looks more like Adam, Prince of Eternia. By the power of Greyskull, I have the POWER!!!
Steve Sutton wrote:
I can make out the star constellation Orion, if I stare at it long enough.
I agree--it looks very Orion-like to me.
Think of the implications!
(Um, are there any implications? Is it a cosmic vote of confidence for a bankrupt movie distributor? Silence of the Lambs was pretty good....)
From the article:
What!? That he was cured? I hope he keeps the dialysis
as "complementary treatment"...If he dies can his relatives
sue the preacherman and god?
I hope she didn't have glaucoma....she is not going
to get the needed time to take care of her eyes while
pursuing this phantom treatment..
So when the surgeon comes to amputate his feet because
he didn't get treatment will Broughton ask god what he did wrong?
If this keeps up more and more will be leaving in a hearse..
"demoman" made a comment about "echo chamber snarkiness"?...
Demoman, do you care that these people are wasting valuable
time with this instead of seeking proven methods of treatment? They are *not* going to get this time back!
I also thought it looked like the Orion constellation. That's three people so far, which I believe qualifies as an organization under the "Alice's Restaurant" rules. How many more before it becomes a movement?
All Hail The Great Hunter!
it didn't make any sense to me until I read this paragraph in the original article:
ah, ok. That all makes sense now. Thanks for clearing that up.
(I first read the post's title as being a recommendation for action, with "drywall" being a verb. Sort of an E.A.Poe take on execution?)
This little hate site devoted to serving pseudo intellectuals provides an endless source of proof of the bigoty, and danger, of the atheist mind set.
I certainly do not want admitted atheists ruling over me.
They have always managed to kill believers by the thousands whenever they get power.
Oh my, I think people will be offended by my remarks.
Tough shit.
I think you need to get the lighting right to see anything. Here's the only picture I found that suggests what people are seeing. http://www.hamiltonspectator.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=hamil…
To me it looks to me more like a collar and dangling necktie than a man on a cross, but I guess people see what they want.
The probability is clearly pretty high of getting a sufficiently simple recognizable shape in deformed drywall, but it'd be interesting to see a rigorous analysis. Here's a case where "creation math" would tell you that the odds against it are astronomically huge, since they'd typically assign an independent probability for each bump or discoloration. In fact, the shapes are constrained to be continuous in some way that I don't understand enough to define properly.
One toy distribution that could give a sense of this sort of phenomenon is to look at the space of closed piecewise cubic curves going through a small number of control points (around 10, say) chosen uniformly on a unit disk and taken in order clockwise around the center? What is the probability of getting some vaguely recognizable silhouette this way. I imagine it's reasonably high (>1/1000).
This is no more remarkable than spotting shapes in clouds. The human visual cortex tries very hard to match patterns, and it will often spot apparent matches in any random input.
Oh, and Mickey: atheists don't want to rule over you. There's nothing more annoying than having to lead the stupid.
-jcr
ugggh, happy to see that your link for the video was my new hometown channel. Thanks...
So, are they going to repair the crack in the drywall? Or just leave up those pieces of broken, possibly moldy drywall? Maybe the mold spores could help them get into the spirit on Sundays. Or just poison them...
"This little hate site devoted to serving pseudo intellectuals provides an endless source of proof of the bigoty, and danger, of the atheist mind set."
Translation: "I can't read the big words"
"I certainly do not want admitted atheists ruling over me."
translation: "I am a bigot."
"They have always managed to kill believers by the thousands whenever they get power."
Translation: "I'm talking about religion here, but maybe they won't notice."
"Oh my, I think people will be offended by my remarks."
Nah, sweetie. I'd have to respect your opinion or care what you think before you could offend me.
~~~
Even theists have to be embarrassed by this shit. I mean following a god that has to appear in drywall, or stains under a bridge? If god exists, why such low class apparitions? Why not make a big show of it?
Or maybe the delusional are just making it up? Nah, couldn't be just cracks in a wall.
Does anyone here know if there are any studies on the variability of this tendency in the human population? Some people seem to see faces and animals everywhere, in clouds, mountains, trees, wallpaper. Myself, I've never seen a cloud that looked like anything but a (beautiful, particular) cloud.
Mick: not only do I not want to rule over you, I would in some cases fight to defend your right to worship damaged drywall. But I also have a constitutionally protected right to laugh at you for worshipping damaged drywall. I mean, faith is one thing, but c'mon.
If god exists, why such low class apparitions? Why not make a big show of it?
True--I mean, if anyone would have a budget for high-quality special effects, it'd have to be god.
Maybe cracks in a wall/burns on a tortilla are the work of lesser deities, who can't afford cutting-edge effects.
Here's the only picture I found that suggests what people are seeing.
You're right... it's Kosh!
yagwara:
If I see anything, it's usually a face. I'm curious if you would consider yourself good or bad at recalling faces you've seen before. I consider myself reasonably good, often remembering the context of where I met the person even if it was very brief, though often having absolutely no idea of their name even if we were introduced and I remember some part of a conversation. I assume that there's a whole part of my subconscious busily extracting facial features and classifying them and it works whether I'm looking at a face, the moon, a pizza, or damaged drywall. This is typical of most people, but I imagine there is some variability.
The power of pareidolia is mighty, I know, but usually in these cases, isn't there some vaguely face-like smudge to begin with? Here, it's just a couple of cracks on the wall.
I'm sure I can't see anything remotely like human in that even if I try.
Mick: There's a difference between atheism and theism. You're confusing the two.
Well, I for one am convinced. This appears to be a authentic miracle to me. No really. Honest. I'm not kidding...
For those who are unwilling or unable to see this for the miracle that it is, I have posted some enhanced images that are very revealing. Please take a look so you too can be saved.
Mick: I too am concerned with bigoty.
Isn't it hilarious when people have to come yell at others laughing at them for being stupid? I'm guessing he saw drywall cracks and thought "Shit! Its Jesus like the headline said!"
And its understandable, his hate, since Xtians never killed anyone who disagreed with them while they were in power. Like the Crusades, or the Inquisition, or witch trials, or "christian heritage" killings and lynchings, or, I dunno, any Iraq war. Nope, those xtians are just paragons of lamblike charity when they've got the reins. Regular Samaritans they are. Yeeup.
Mmm hmm.
"Maybe cracks in a wall/burns on a tortilla are the work of lesser deities, who can't afford cutting-edge effects."
Then they're hardly worth all the cloying, fawning attention they get. Jerry Bruckheimer is more powerful then god.
*shudders*
Yeah, but only God can get away with killing over a thousand people just to get the perfect spackling effect.
My daughter's former apartment in New Orleans had a perfect image of Frank Zappa on the living room wall made entirely of Katrina-inspired Aspergillum niger. "Drywall" wasn't a very accurate description by the time we got there to clean up, though.
Surely I have that photo here somewhere..........
PLEASE FIND IT!!!!!
Frank may be trying to tell us something.
Did you make an offering of coffee and cigarettes to the image?
"I assume that there's a whole part of my subconscious busily extracting facial features and classifying them and it works whether I'm looking at a face, the moon, a pizza, or damaged drywall."
There is indeed--and we know where in the brain this occurs:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/02/0203_060203_brain.html
"Yeah, but only God can get away with killing over a thousand people just to get the perfect spackling effect."
Good point. Jerry has to fake killing countless people for entertainment value.
PaulC,
You stole my thunder. Of course, I, being me, would have made the same point with far less humor.
What would have convinced me is that, in response to what surely was millions of good, solid folks in this great country of ours, praying very hard for Katrina to spare us, God would have called Katrina off. Instead of what they got, the winds would have just quit, the hurricane disappearing off the planet.
Had we had a "poof" of miraculous proportions, to me, that would have said about 200 billion times as much as drywall damage.
Only one thing prevents me from going all-out, though: Am I the only one who kinda-sorta sees an aroused FSM in the drywall?
I'm going to have to agree with Julie from way back at the top of the comments, in that it looks to me like a uterus with a pair of fallopian tubes sticking out. One of the tubes is going off a a weird angle, though...
So the theists omnipotent god, who created all those great artists, wants to send a signal to the faithful and this is all he can come up with?
"Had we had a "poof" of miraculous proportions, to me, that would have said about 200 billion times as much as drywall damage."
Ah, but that would have been physical proof, and Christians are sternly warned not to ask God to prove himself, because that shows a lack of faith, and "if God were to show himself in that way, there would be no need for faith in Him". He doesn't work that way. Don't laugh - I heard that hundreds of times from the pulpit while I was growing up. Never mind that what all the IDists are doing is exactly looking for such physical proof...
Closet pastaphiliac!
Huh, I too saw a uterus. Just like those nuts that saw one in the pictures of Hurricane Katrina just before it hit. If only we were all like the moral authority of the Christian Right, then the world would be a better place.
K. If God did exist, why would he speak to us through pictures he drew on drywall? You would think he would do something a little more impressive.
"They have always managed to kill believers by the thousands whenever they get power."
Interesting theory, Mick. But I don't think George Bush is an atheist.
My vote is for Orion, though I also think the figure looks a bit like Zorba the Greek.
Dunno, looks pornographic to me....
God sending us messages through drywall bumps... Isn't that kind of like aliens beaming down to Earth and communicating via bathroom graffiti?
I don't care if hurricane floods us,
Long as I got my Drywall Jesus
Hanging on the wall so bizarre.
Through all trials and tribulations,
We make it up through donations
With my Drywall Jesus I'll go far.
Carlie:
But apparently God is allowed to present ambiguous physical evidence that can also be attributed to coincidence. And even if coincidence is possible, if it would turn out to be very unlikely--say, picking letters out of a hat in order that exactly match the KJV beginning of John's gospel--statistical inference would say this a proof up to certain confidence level given by a p-value that the letters were not picked randomly, which--somehow ruling out chicanery--could be taken as a sign of the supernatural.
So the only miracles God can produce are ones such that if you work out the p-values rigorously, the weight of evidence suggests the null hypothesis. Or in other words, there is no miracle at all.
However, the faithful are expected to conclude as a sign of their faith that a miracle really occurred anyway.
Did I get this right?
Jeremy posted this on Panda's Thumb.
This judge is a pathetic ignorant freak.
http://www.americanvision.org/articlearchive/03-01-06.asp
Carlie:
This is another thing I never got about ID. It postulates a rather curious creat^H^H^H^H^Hdesigner.
The "designer" is powerful enough to be responsible for the full diversity of life on earth and all its amazing mechanisms, many exceeding current human technology. If the designer wanted to leave a clear sign of the design event, that should be pretty easy. In our experience, the design and manufacture of artifacts leaves a noticeable trace by default. If, on the other hand, the designer wanted to hide all evidence of the existence of the design event, that would be possible assuming enough power. The lack of any direct evidence of a design event suggests that the designer--omnipotent or not, certainly smarter than you or I--intended to eliminate all traces.
So then along comes Dembski, treatise in hand yelling "Gotcha! You thought you could remove all traces of the design event, but my patented Explanatory Filter (TM) proves that there had to be a design. Sorry Mr. Designer, you've gotta get up pretty early in the dawn of creation to fool William A. Dembski."
I mean, which is more arrogant, assuming it is possible to find natural order in the universe, or postulating a God who clearly doesn't want to be observed directly but can be caught on camera if you're just clever enough?
Yep, I see a... mermaid! :)
Oh, I missed the best quote of all:
"I feel he's trying to open even the simplest minds."
I'm going to go with the Orion vote. The real question is why haven't Orion's miraculous healing powers been used before now?
Just be careful it doesn't jump out from your computer screens. It might also fly out from the screens. Keep your distance, people.
I honestly don't see it
garth:
Ironically, haven't we been bombing Samara recently?
Paul,
"However, the faithful are expected to conclude as a sign of their faith that a miracle really occurred anyway.
Did I get this right?"
Yep. It takes those "spiritual eyes" to interpret it "correctly". The scary thing is that when you've been raised in it, it makes perfect sense. It took me years, even long after going through a PhD in evolutionary biology, to realize how f*ed up the whole thing was.
I gotta change my vote to Orion as well (even though it still looks rather, ah, nebulous). It actually was the first thing that came to mind, but as a backyard astronomer I wasn't sure how many other folks would get the reference. (OT Cute party game: next time someone tells you their "sign," ask them to point it out to you in the night sky.)
Does this make it a movement yet?
So by my count it's currently Orion 6, Uterus 3.
Go Orion go!
(Hmm--are we Orionites at risk of starting a religion dedicated to the hatred of uteruses? Or is that seat already taken?)
How about a compromise? It is the Holy Uterus of Orion.
Be Sirius, PZ.
I was about to say that throughout Catholic education I was never encouraged to expect any sort of outward sign. My understanding was that this equated with superstition and thought to run contrary to genuine faith--basically, it's OK for illiterate peasants who don't know any better, but not the focus of a mature faith.
On the other hand, I have to admit that the Vatican has people who seriously go out and investigate miracles for purposes of beatification and canonization, so I'm not sure where the Catholic church stands officially.
I feel that in many respects, the best Catholic education encourages critical thinking for making moral decisions and doesn't descend into the whole personal Jesus claptrap except in the sort of weird amalgam of American wannabe-evangelical Catholicism. The basic problem is that it tends to be critical thinking up to a point and when you reach that point, you either need to willfully put aside the faculties you've worked so hard to hone or else make a clean break for it. In temperament, I am still more comfortable with this than with my understanding of evangelical Christianity, but I admit that each have their own problems.
I say it is an image of the Flying Spaghetti Monster's Noodley Appendage touching a pirate. Clearly He is trying to show the heathens the true path to everlasting pasta, the beer volcano, and the stripper factory and how one should be saved from a hideously boring afterlife of eternal meals of beans and neverending office work.
It's a WANDERING uterus!! They finally found proof that they exist!!
Why does Jesus come back in cookies and tortillas and drywall?
PaulC:
I'm OK with recalling faces, but then I'm a university instructor, so I do get regular practice. But I've never seen a face in a cloud or a tree or anything else, even when others tell me it's plain as day. Even the famous "face on Mars" was really a borderline case to me.
I've been accused of being a wee bit autistic, perhaps that's related.
Anonymous, that's hysterical :).
But when I'm, er, under the influence of foreign substances, I see faces EVERYWHERE...
It looks sort of like one of those yellow/flesh colored stress squeezy toys, in a sombrero.
Here's what I see when I look at the Holy Crack:
http://www.youdamnkid.com/d/19990301.html
CH
In the right light, it looks a little like the Tick villain, the Mother of Invention.
It looks nothing like Jesus, though.
I think this needs to go in the guiness book of world records, because I have never seen a miracle image that has looked less like its subject in my entire life.
yagwara, PaulC,
I have pretty much the same experience as PaulC on faces regarding remembering context but not necessarily names, except as yagwara I have few false positives elsewhere. And no, I've never been accused of authism.
I think the face recognition system can be extremely precise. I remember a show with a person who had most of his face, including eyes and nose, surgically removed due to a fungus infection. It wasn't until the last minutes that I had retrained myself to actually see an equivalent of a face associated with his head. A peculiar experience.
I do have some false positives for small dark spots that are moving (for example, if I'm walking) in my peripheral vision when I'm tired. I usually see them as bugs. Funny thing is that before a long visit in US I saw them as flies, and now as cockroaches. Seems that particular pattern recognition is trainable to whatever I find particularly icky.
6-4 Orion to Uterus. Damn where are all my uteren followers when I need them.