Eight Minutes Old

Finally I’m finished :-):
In total I’ve listed 100 cases of Christian religious pareidolia, in which either Jesus Christ or the Virgin Mary have been seen. I will now analyse them in detail to see whether my vague theory mentioned earlier is supported by the data.

Long-Time developments and ratios

The rise and fall of Jesus’ Mother

Ok, I have to admit I do several things wrong in the figure. I shouldn’t combine the data points with a line graph and I should not include the 2008 numbers because the year isn’t over yet. And furthermore I should give error bars so one can judge the uncertainties. But let’s accept this for the moment.
First look at the overall percentages. Of the 100 events in the sample, 67 involve Jesus and 37 the Virgin Mary, in some cases both were seen. So Jesus is seen twice as often. Is this the case every year or are there trends in the data? Looking at the figure, one can see that there indeed is a trend visible: until this year Virgin Mary sightings increased and Jesus sightings decreased a bit. To make the numbers more comparable, let’s look at the rounded percentages of Jesus and Mary appearing each year are (they sum up to over 100% because sometimes both are seen at once):

Clearly sights of Virgin Mary had increased in the last years but the number drops strongly in 2008. As the year isn’t over yet, it is not sure if the trend will continue. But it seems as if we will have a Jesus dominated year again. I don’t have an explanation for this at hand, maybe it is just a statistical effect. (Please comment if you have one!)

Month dependency

Is Jesus a seasonal worker?

Another idea is that the frequency of sightings might be modulated depending on the time in the year. One would expect a maximum at the end of the year due to Christmas and maybe another at Easter, but the latter will be smoothed out because the date changes from year to year. The most current data from 2008 has to be excluded from the analysis because the year is not jet finished and further sightings will be reported in August, September, October, November and December. I might want do re-do the analysis in January next year.
For the years 2004 to 2007, in total 63 sightings are reported. I will not differentiate between Jesus and Mary because that would cause too few data points. When expecting a uniform distribution over the year and only statistical errors, the expected number of sightings is 5.25 per month with an statistical standard error of the square root of this. So within one sigma of about 2.3, 3 to 7.5 sightings are expected per month, quite a margin. Most month are well inside this, only July (0 sightings), August (12 sightings) and November (9 sightings) show deviations. I wouldn’t expect them to be very significant, the one sigma error only says that, expecting a normally distributed population, the probability to be within one sigma is approximately 68%. So 32% are outside. Out of 12 values we thus would expect about four to be outside, three are fine too. Furthermore the zero sightings in July will be made up with the nine in 2008 when including this year’s data. Nevertheless there seems to be a increase towards the end of the year, I’m curious how this will evolve in the next month.
The increase in the middle of the year, August, is quite significant (over 99 %). It might have to do with the media not having other things to talk about or maybe there is too much sun making peoples brains malfunction more often. I’m not aware of any as important Christian dates at that time than Christmas or Easter. But when one combines July, where no sightings are reported for the time span in question, and August, the numbers are within the expected average again. I think this is some kind of an artefact in the data.

Material and Texture dependence

Why can’t they simply eat Jesus?

The data do not show any strong trends for Jesus or the Virgin Mary to appear on different materials, with one exception: Only Jesus is seen in imaging like x-rays or ultrasound (7 times). In general, pareidolia perceptions are most frequent in food (29), then in wood (18), followed by dirt (11), light (10), on walls and in rock (8 each). Hearty, salty foods like potato chips or cheese toast are preferred.

The original theory was that Jesus is found more frequently in fluffy things and the Virgin Mary in flowing structures. This is well confirmed by the data as the following table shows. Appearances where the texture could not be determined because of bad pictures, no pictures at all or because I could not decide were excluded. These made up 14 pareidolia perceptions.

This clearly shows that Jesus is seen in fluffy structures three times as often as in flowing ones. The ratio is almost inverted for Virgin Mary, who is seen in over two out of three occasions in flowing textures. This backs my expectation that the usual pictures have something to do with the places where they are found. Virgin Mary usually having a head scarf or veil is found most often in flowing, fluid-like and soft textures that have less but bigger, more connected areas. Jesus in contrast, possibly owing to his beard and hair, is mostly seen in structures with rough surfaces, consisting of many different small areas.

Origin

Where does Jesus live today?

Investigating where the sightings occurred reveals that most are from the US. Only 16 are from other countries, four of those are from the UK (all Jesus, not surprisingly as there are many protestants), two from Australia and one each from Columbia, Germany, the Philippines, New Zeeland, Switzerland, Canada, Romania, Mexico, Ghana and Moldavia. There is a strong selection effect in the data as I only looked on English sites and news pages but I still think the US are especially ‘gifted’ concerning religious pareidolia.
Within the United States the distribution is also very strongly centred. Many states only have one or two sightings: Colorado, Indiana, North Carolina, New Mexico, Nebraska, Maine, Wisconsin, Columbia, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Kansan, Georgia, Missouri, Michigan, Idaho, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Connecticut and Virginia. I found tree each for Ohio, Arizona, Illinois and Pennsylvania. The top three states are far away from these values, they are:

• Place three: California with 13 total sightings
• Place two: Texas with 15 total sightings
• And the ‘Winner’: Florida with 16 sightings

Why are these three the top-states for pareidolia? Maybe it is because of an point mentioned earlier: They get to much sun in the south. Additionally, the number of inhabitants has to be taken into account. Simply compare the map above with this one.
Looking at the distribution of Jesus and Virgin Mary ‘appearances’ in these three states one can see a clear trend (double-counting sightings in which both are seen at once):

• California: Jesus 4, Virgin Mary 9
• Texas: Jesus 9, Virgin Mary 6
• Florida: Jesus 13, Virgin Mary 5

Texas shows a more or less average distribution, but California is clearly biased towards the Virgin Mary and Florida towards seeing Jesus. This is not unexpected as Julia from ForeignLight pointed out to me. In California there are more Catholics (the state has the largest Roman Catholic population of all states in the US) that have a connection to the Virgin Mary and in Florida there are more Protestants (40% of the population in contrast to 26% Catholics according to Wikipedia) that worship Jesus. Population in Texas is rather mixed, it has many Evangelical Protestants but also Roman Catholics. The numbers, according to Wikipedia, are: Protestants 32.5%, Catholics: 21% (Thus the ratio actually is exactly the Jesus to Virgin Mary ratio). I think it is an excellent and exciting result that these trends are also seen in the small data set analysed. It’s amazing to see the analogy.

What can we learn from this?

So how can I make money out of this crap?

As promised I now tell you where to look to find Jesus’ / Virgin Mary’s face. I think the most promising place is the classic one: Food (like a cheese toast). I’ll tell you why.

Often the pareidolia are found in food, especially baked, fried or toasted. I think one reason is that people have to eat frequently and while doing so they have the time to look. The Christians also have a special relation to bread (and fish, so Jesus seen in a fish stick is a classic).
Furthermore, in contrast to fixed objects like walls, you can change the perspective when looking at, say, a piece of toast. For Jesus or Mary to be seen in the structure of a wall they have to stand upright. The toast, in contrast, can be seen from different sides, you can rotate it and it has two different sides to look at! A toast also is a rather small area, so you are not distracted and the figure you want to see can be small. If you look at a wall the appearance has to be big so a passer by can see it. And most people eat more than one toast. Maybe there even is more toast out there than there are walls.
The light conditions outside change in the course of one day and from season to season, so if Jesus or Mary or any other face appear somewhere, that appearance might be gone an hour later. The light conditions while eating are simpler I think.
And the best: If you find a especially convincing depiction of a religious figure in, say, a slab of toast, it is easy to sell. You will have troubles to turn a public wall in an underpass into money and your might not want to sell your pet (which would not be possible via eBay either), so settle for the simple. Ok, it might not bee the most extravagant one, but referring to the Christians connection to bread it is convincing and it will be hard to come up with a reason why seeing Mary in a spot of mildew is flattering. And why should Jesus show up on only one toast?

I’d like to finish with pointing you to a more humorous approach of toast-appearances.

Related Posts

• August 29, 2008 — Christian Pareidolia Study (Part II): The List
• August 21, 2008 — Christian Pareidolia Study (Part I): Outline and Examples
• August 18, 2008 — Pareidolia Weeks

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 18th, 2008 at 1:12 pm and is filed under Pareidolia, Religion, Sceptic.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.