News Flash: Pareidolia causes man to see something important in random patterns of light and color!

Good stuff here:

Atheist Sees Image of Big Bang in Piece of Toast

It's interesting how obviously ridiculous things like that seem (faces appearing in toast) when you just change the context a little bit.

For a little more perspective, the tendency of the human brain to see patterns where none exist (for example the faces of mythological figures on grilled cheese sandwiches) is called "Pareidolia". As a survival technique, so the theory goes, human brains are hard wired to recognize things that are important to our survival. That includes human faces (thus the man in the moon, the face on mars, the old man in the mountain, etc.), and symbols which represent our beliefs (images of religious icons, for example, like the monkey tree phenomenon). It's not a miracle, it's just the way we work.

Still don't believe me? Then tell me what this looks like to you -> :)

If you said a smiley face, then you're just as susceptible to pareidolia as the rest of us. After all, it isn't a face, it's just two dots and a curved line that really look nothing like eyes or a mouth. This is the same reason that cartoon style drawings work, not to mention the iconography in warning and street signs, and rorschach tests (a.k.a. ink blot tests).

For a whole lot of pareidolia, and not a little irreverence, check this out.