Sep 27 2008
RP) Pattern Recognition and Personification
Fresh from the womb newborns respond to almost anything vaguely reminiscent of a face. Two black dots and a line beneath it will set neurons firing. We leave a world of liquid and enter one of gas ready and eager to find faces. They are that important to us. And so we find them. We even find faces where they don’t exist: in inkblots, in oil stains, in wisps of frozen water vapor, even in the charring of a grilled cheese sandwich.
Pareidolia is the psychological tendency to find patterns where none exist. Place three 60 degree angles in line with one another, but separated by a great white space, and the human mind will “see” a triangle. Our minds jump to premature conclusions because this is the safer tendency. What triggers our inferences is not particular, but general. While this is adaptive, it is far from always correct.
Because we are a fundamentally social species, our mistaken inferences frequently consist of “finding” human or human-like forms and behaviors.
The angel of the LORD appeared to him in a blazing fire from the midst of a bush (Exodus 3:2, New American Standard Bible).
. . . and God answered in thunder. (Exodus 19:19, NASB)
In very few contemporary religions does a supreme deity consist of an animal or blind force. Where this is the case, my guess is that people do not view themselves as apart from nature. How many people worship an “It” completely alien to and unconcerned with human life? People are much more likely to find human-like behavior and concerns compelling, and hence believable. As Daniel Dennet put it, “People want a God who can be loved and feared the way you love or fear another person.” (27)
It is my belief that at the core of the religious impulse you will find mistaken inferences shaped by the nature of the human mind.
Our pet dogs cower during thunderstorms. Do they do so because the sound too closely resembles the growling of beast of super (natural) proportions? I don’t know. But it is curious that chimpanzees have been observed responding to thunderstorms with threat displays, as if attempting to chase the storms away. (28) Do human beings make such fundamental errors in their inferences?
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(27) Dennett, D., Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, Viking, New York, 2006, p. 266
(28) McCrew, W. C., The Cultured Chimpanzee: Reflections on Cultural Primatology, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2004, p. 156
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[first posted here: http://almightyalpha.blogspot.com/2008/02/pattern-recognition-and-personification.html on 1/12/08]
