We are living in an enlightened age, indeed!

Apparently, CNN is reporting that some guy sees Satan on a turtle shell. Now, before I go out on a limb and bash the guy too terribly, I want to take CNN to task for making news out of absolutely nothing. Despite the fact that it's a slow news day, there is no reason to give people who refuse to think anymore ammunition.

From the article:

Owner Bryan Dora now says he sees Satan's face on the critter's shell. He can spot lips, eyes, a goatee, shoulders and a pair of pointy horns on Lucky's back.

"The marking on the shell was like the devil wanted us to know he was down there," Bryan Dora said. "To me, it's too coincidental that the only thing to come out unscathed would have this image on it."

I guess the first, most obvious question to me is, "why would Satan want to burn down your pet store?" The second question to follow would be, "okay, assume Satan wants to burn down your pet store, why would he leave you a Satan-gram?" Then, "okay, assume Satan wants to burn down your pet store AND he wants to leave you a Satan-gram...why not appear to you and jump up and down and say, 'Bryan Dora, I burnt down your pet store, come to me and feel the power of the Dark Side'?"

At the very least, make it more obvious than a crude outline of a Satan face on the back of a turtle shell!

Besides, how do you know what Satan looks like? The stylized horn and goatee devil is a relatively recent phenomenon (last 100 years) and I believe is mostly popularized by cartoons, comics and tattoo parlors. This smacks to me of the same phenomenon that causes "alien abductees" to draw pictures of aliens that look remarkably similiar to each other...and remarkably similiar to aliens in science-fiction magazines, TV, and movies of the time period the abductees grew up in.

I'm not dogging on anyone's religious beliefs, I just get really sick of these miracles (remember the Jesus Tortilla?) that really aren't. They always seem to stem from a combination of the need to feel significant and a lack of understanding of how the visual system operates. Humans, and most other animals are wired to recognize patterns. It's a mental shortcut that allows us to recognize faces at a glance from various angles. It's what allows us to rapidly process incoming visual data and assess whether we are in danger, or safe. It's what kept your ancestors from ending up as lion-food long enough to propagate the genes that eventually became you. It's also what causes you to see shapes in cloud formations, or tortillas, or turtle shells.

Get over yourself...so far, not a single "miracle" in recent history has stood up to true scientific inquiry. More often than not, there's either been fraud or duplicity involved...or simple random chance.

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