Dr. Richard Dawkins, British zoologist, famed anthropologist and expert on Darwinism, took on the hefty task of discussing design vs. evolution in his 1996 collection of essays Climbing Mount Improbable. In these essays, Dr. Dawkins illustrated the differences between things that had clearly been designed by intelligent beings (his example is Mount Rushmore) versus singularities he called “designoids.”
“Designoids,” to quote Dr. Dawkins’ text, are “artifacts of the natural world that appear to be designed, but have in fact been shaped by a magnificently non-random process which creates an almost perfect illusion of design.” The obvious response to that statement is: what the hell does that mean?
“I chose Mount Rushmore, because to live in a country where you can take an ugly old mountain and put faces on it, faces of great Americans, who did so much to make our country super great, well that makes me - Rebecca Leeman – proud to be an American!”
Let’s return to Mount Rushmore for a moment. When you gaze upon the faces of those national figures protruding from the face of the mountain, never for a moment would anyone entertain the idea that these detailed visages were the work of anything other than the hand of the eccentric Gutzon Gorblum. It’s clear to anyone that even the combined and indomitable forces of wind and rain could not be responsible for something so precise and unique.
“Designoids” fall somewhere outside this realm. At first glance, they may seem like natural occurrences of rock or trees or whatever, but after a closer inspection, things that are familiar and strange become clear to the viewer, and it’s about this time that we start looking around for the hidden camera.
Take, for example, the samurai crab. Called “heikegani” in Japanese, these small crabs, like most crabs, feature ridges and bumps on their carapaces where muscles attach to the interior of their exoskeletons. By a strange evolutionary accident, the bumps and ridges on the back of the heikegani resemble the typically stylized face of an angry and determined samurai warrior. Imagine yourself as a Japanese fisherman about a thousand years ago, pulling up a net full of delicious crabs, only to look at their backs and see a whole phalanx of samurai warriors staring back at you.
Another fine example of a “designoid” is the famous basalt rock formation in Hawaii that strikes an eerie resemblance to the profile of John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
The point is that the formations on Mount Rushmore were clearly designed to resemble human faces, while the heike crab and the JFK basalt cliffs were not, though our brains process the images in much the same way. That is to say, humans are hard-wired to see human faces everywhere.
The unique combination of eyes, nose, and mouth is easily the most important and distinguishable feature for the human eye and that of our close primate cousins. When we encounter another human being, we look them in the eyes and we examine their face, this is how we determine the mental and emotional state of the person with whom we are interacting. An unfortunate side-effect of this psychological focus on the face is that humans see faces in everything. Any pattern that remotely resembles the arrangement of features or shading on a human face will trigger that same psychological response. Even when we’re babies, we look to human faces for comfort and cues, and by extension, we look for, and see them, everywhere from grilled cheese sandwiches to Chicago underpasses.
This common psychological fixation becomes a problem when a person’s spirituality, already an exercise in masturbatory self-delusion, takes them from perfectly functioning human machine, to the poster boy for “this is your brain on Jesus.”
In case you hadn’t heard, Jesus and his mom have been spotted again. In fact, Jesus has been quite busy recently, his holy visage appearing in everything from dental x-rays, to shower curtains. Mary, on the other hand, has maintained the good taste only to appear in delicious chocolatey treats. I suppose this is the closest we’ll ever get to Tom Waits’ “immaculate confection.”
Over the years, I’ve come to terms with my implacable atheism. I no longer feel the urge to throttle that guy that tries to give me pamphlets explaining how I’m going to suffer for all eternity in “the fires that burn but do not consume” because I won’t kneel in front of two sticks nailed together for an hour once a week. I’ve relegated myself to a combination of quaint understanding and pity. This man truly believes that the holy bible is the inimitable word of god and that if he does not follow its tenets, he will be punished. Frankly, if I truly believed that, then it would only seem logical that I would try and save other souls from perpetual suffering, right?
But when I read about these fucking morons that see Jesus in apartment windows and chocolate drippings, however, it just makes me want to spit. I cannot imagine how brain-dead, deluded and childishly ignorant someone must be to entertain the thought for even a second that the lord and savior of all humanity, the lamb of god, the son of the almighty creator would show himself to his faithful subjects in a dental x-ray.
“You know, dad, Javier has been a faithful subject for his whole life. He’s a good man that keeps your word to heart, follows my earthly example and cares for his family and his community. He is truly of the faithful flock. I think I’ll show myself to him, this day, to show our appreciation for his virtue and faith. I know, I’ll put my face in the x-ray his dentist took to see if he need a root canal!”
And why is when these people see Jesus in their omelet or on the mud pattern on the bumper of their '89 Buick Skylark, it’s always the stylized, western Christianity’s version of Jesus with the pale skin and well-combed beard that you see on candles in Mexican restaurants? If Jesus really were making his face known to his flock, wouldn’t he actually use his real face?
First of all, we know Jesus of Galilee was real because he’s mentioned in several Roman historical records, most importantly, that of the great Herodotus. Secondly, fossil records, realistic portraits and description along with anthropological and ethnic evidence, historians have a pretty good idea of what most people from that are, and by extension, what Jesus looked most probably looked like.
The amusing possibility is that the real face of Jesus, the one pictured above, could be appearing in milkshakes and oil stains around the country, but no one is recognizing it!
I keep thinking about that part in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, when Ford Prefect is explaining to Arthur Dent how he got to Earth in the first place:
“Unfortunately I got stuck on the Earth for rather longer than I intended," said Ford. "I came for a week and got stuck for fifteen years."
"But how did you get there in the first place then?"
"Easy, I got a lift with a teaser."
"A teaser?"
"Yeah."
"Er, what is ..."
"A teaser? Teasers are usually rich kids with nothing to do. They cruise around looking for planets which haven't made interstellar contact yet and buzz them."
"Buzz them?" Arthur began to feel that Ford was enjoying making life difficult for him.
"Yeah", said Ford, "they buzz them. They find some isolated spot with very few people around, then land right by some poor soul whom no one's ever going to believe and then strut up and down in front of him wearing silly antennae on their heads and making beep beep noises. Rather childish really."
Perhaps these appearances of Jesus’ face in fruit salads and tattered car upholstery are actually elaborate practical jokes by aliens. But then, of course, that would get all of these brain dead assholes off the hook.
The fact is that it’s normal to see faces everywhere, but to twist that strange psychological tendency into a spiritual manifestation, you’re doing more to slow the advancement of your cause than anything else. Seriously, would you convert to a religion whose singular epitomic symbol of humanity and divinity kept saying “hey!” to his followers by showing his face in sandwiches and on the bumpers of cars that never get cleaned? Not likely.
I could end this blog with something thoughtful and poignant, like “look for salvation in yourself,” or “the face you should celebrate every day is the one in the mirror,” but Vinay would just make fun of me for it. So if you see Jesus, or Buddha, or Ganesh, or whomever, in your tomato soup at lunch tomorrow, tell them I said they’re a pussy, and if they don’t like it, you tell ‘em to come see me. I’ll be having roast beef with extra horseradish. They’ll know where to find me.
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