Christianity Made Me Talk Like an Idiot by Seth Andrews

Author:Seth Andrews [Andrews, Seth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: RELIGION / Atheism
Publisher: Outskirts Press, Inc.
Published: 2022-02-02T05:00:00+00:00

Pattern Seeking

Humans are pattern-seeking animals, often seeing meaningful connections between unrelated or coincidental things (apophenia) and detecting sounds or images in random sensory noise (pareidolia). The chance encounter with an old flame feels like destiny. The random Rorschach inkblot looks like a butterfly. The NASA Viking 1 spacecraft snaps a “human face” photo of the rocky surface of Mars. The gambler wins a series of hands and thanks Lady Luck for the streak. A heart-shaped cloud seems like a message from the heavens. And a bent I-beam discovered in a pile of tornado debris looks like a cross.

In our evolutionary past, pattern-seeking often proved useful. In the dangerous world of predators and prey, assigning agency to random things saved lives. Did an incidental breeze rustle the trees, or was it a hungry tiger? The assumption of purpose often prevented us from being eaten alive.

Pattern-seeking also served to comfort our primitive species as we fumbled in ignorance about our world. Humans were so desperate to find order in the chaos, they would often see things that they didn’t actually see, hear things they didn’t actually hear, and perceive purpose that wasn’t actually there. The wind grazed the trees, and we imagined a carnivore lurking. Stars clustered into shapes, and we perceived a cosmic hand drawing images. We had a chance encounter, and we felt a sense of destiny. In our minds, these experiences couldn’t be random. They implied intention, and we still see this penchant for pattern-seeking today.

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