Some 10,000 people descended on the Knock Shrine a few months ago to see a Marian Apparition, promised by "clairvoyant" Joe Coleman to appear in the sun. Mary Kenny of the Irish Independent asks "What harm if people derive comfort from what they believe to be a spiritual experience?" while an Irish opthalmic surgeon now reports that he has treated no fewer than five people already, claiming it "monstrous" to mislead people into thinking that altered vision and effects, such as seeing the sun dance, were a religious apparition when they were classic symptoms of solar retinopathy. [more inside]
posted by disillusioned on Dec 3, 2009 - 44 comments

Things That Look Like Other Things. Also known as pareidolia, it's the phenomenon in which our brains perceive familiar things (especially faces and human forms) in random places. See also The Pareidolia Museum and the Flickr pareidolia pool. [Previous pareidolia-related threads here]
posted by amyms on Mar 28, 2008 - 40 comments